Proyecto de Las Mujeres Ambientalistas

Esteli, Nicaragua

These friendly women will show you how they make paper and will let you get your hands wet to make some paper yourself. The central core of their work is recycling paper mixed with plant-based waste such as banana stalks, corn husks, coconut shells, onion skins and other vegetable fibres. They make their own unique textured papers by hand. After sun-drying they artfully craft them into beautiful greeting cards and other items which they display and make available for you to acquire to take with you. They have three organic gardens: one for natural herbal medicines donated by Stanford University in 2010, one for organic vegetables, and one for indigenous tropical plants that you can stroll through during weekdays. This is an excellent photo opportunity, you can pose in front of beautiful rich colourful murals, painted on the outside walls that tell the history of the project and show the steps of the papermaking process. All this rests in a large, tranquil, park-like setting. Another building has a mural showing the development of the Ekokids from the surrounding barrios, especially Boris Vega. These underprivileged kids are learning good environmental and health practices. If you have the time, they encourage you to spend time volunteering and living with a family in the barrio for a week or month or longer to really learn the culture better. Some volunteers have stayed for a year or more.