Pulling through another tough year

The pandemic kept a hold of our lives for longer than we hoped. Although then international shutdowns have stymied progress, we cannot emphasize enough how your continued support continues to help lives and protect the environment. 

Nicaraguan guides have effectively lost international tourism, which supports the majority of their profession, so many returned to their family farms or left Ometepe to seek employment elsewhere. 

Through all this difficulty, Centro PUMA has continued to support our cadre of guides leading community endeavors. We continue with weekly english classes:

and english classes at our partner location in Las Pilas:

We have also focused on outdoor activities, including hikes with the graduates from our Junior Ranger program. 

We are also very proud to continue our native tree program. During the summer of 2021 we planted another 2000 trees. Our guides collected native seeds in the spring and set up our tree nursery in a new location. Here they are preparing the planting soil:

Elieth shows some of the newly planted tree seedlings

Of course, the most important part are the local children who help us plant the trees

We always reward them with a healthy meal

a fun outing

and end with a swim to cool off and clean up!

We hosted multiple tree-planting outings with dozens of kids

We also had families "adopt" a native tree to pledge to plant in their home care for.

As everything was more difficult this year during the pandemic, so was travel. We, Kate and Jeff (directors of Guias Unidos who sponsor Centro PUMA), were not able to visit the project over the past 1.5 years. Instead, we worked hard at seasonal guiding jobs in the USA. When the National Parks laid off thousands of employees due to Covid, we got jobs as telescope guides at Dark Ranger Telescope Tours in Utah.

We then returned back to the park service for a winter season at the Everglades and a summer season at Sequoia National Park. At the Everglades, during the height of the pandemic, we ran entirely virtual tours of the park, either rangering in the field with iPads to students around the country

or moderating the programs via computer in an office, always social distanced and masked when in groups together. 

Now, fully vaccinated and itching for adventure, we are heading back to Nicaragua in November. We are looking forward to seeing how much the kids have grown, to working with our fellow guides again, and to setting up our new location. Did we mention we have a new location? It's just a couple blocks from the old location, now 1 block south of Altagracia's Central Park, in a historic house with a large property. Although there's a lot of work to fix up the new place, we will have autonomy over the yard and garden, which is integral to our project, and the new premises is much more secure and safe than the old one.

We will be open in November to local classes with kids, and after some interior renovation and decoration, we hope to reopen Centro PUMA to tourists in early 2022. Come and visit, there will be volunteer/guest quarters!

Still going!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! We may have put some new ideas on hold due to the global pandemic, but our fantastic crew in Nicaragua is continuing the good work thanks to your support! Here's the latest scoop: 

Although social distancing and mask wearing are especially difficult in Nicaragua, where many families don't have the means to buy special equipment or the choice to work from home, we tried to encourage mask wearing and hand washing at Centro PUMA

We tried to outdo ourselves with tree plantings for the wet season (June-October), and with the help of our kids, our staff raised and planted about 2000 native trees, starting from seed: 

The kids got some tree-planting excursions around Ometepe

And everybody got to enjoy the happiness of starting new life in the ground. 

Kids are always a big part of Centro PUMA!

Our weekly English classes and daily tutoring continues, and although the classes are designed for kids, all ages can and do attend. An older lady wanted to learn English because she sells goods to tourists from her house: 

We continued our family garden project with 2 new family gardens. One of our challenges this year was the lack of viable seeds for many of the plants we wanted, so we are partnering with another local group to develop a seed bank for family gardens. 

And although we haven't been making a lot of noise on the fundraising side, we continue to apply for grants and seek donations. The latter half of this year has been almost entirely supported by private donations from people like you. We took advantage of our "viral" comet photo to start a photo gallery, and you can still purchase photos with a donation to Guias Unidos. Visit our gallery at https://guiasunidos.shootproof.com/

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to seeing you in 2021! If you are a donor, we will be sending out our end-of-the-year card and newsletter in the early new year. 

Whirlwind of a new year!

It has been a whirlwind of a new year so far. Between a family death that took us back home and the coronavirus now threatening to shut down the world, it all seems like a blur. But thorough it all we have been busy developing Centro PUMA to take advantage of Nicaragua's uptick in tourism. 

In addition to continuing our regular community programs, we are developing a tourist information and service center to help support and grow alongside our education components. Let's take a look!

Kids still come in droves for educational activities including lots of games and drawing. We recently put up some chalk boards to doodle on:

After Ramon finishes his English tutoring with kids, they always find a way of having fun:

Our last regular meeting with last year's Junior Rangers included comparing our compost pile  to a trash pile that we made a year ago. Guess which one biodegraded and turned into soil for the garden?

We ended the meeting with a beautiful graduation ceremony where the kids walked a passage of candles where Arlin gives them their patch:

Doña Gladys's garden that we helped build is looking fantastic! She says that now her family is producing much more healthy vegetables at home, which has helped them financially as well as health-wise.

And now that tourism is returning (or at least it was until the coronavirus started), we are offering new services at Centro PUMA. It has taken all of our time over the last couple months to get these services going, but we are so proud of the successes!

We are partnering with Altagracia Spanish School where you can see Elieth teaching lessons in our beautiful garden:

We are exploring new, off-the-beaten-path tours, such as the "Cueva del Duende" lake shore cave:

Our garden has been producing daily bounties of fresh fruits and veggies

which our guides such as Serafin are now serving as incredible salads:

In addition to serving many types of coffee and smoothies in our "coffee garden," we offer traditional fire roasting of locally grown coffee. Here, Edgard leads a toasting session,

followed by tasting, of course!

We offer chocolate making, from fresh cacao beans--toasting, grinding...

to forming into bite-sized pieces:

 Finally, we have developed a small visitor center with maps, brochures, naturalist books, tour info, a coffee and refreshment menu, and even a small sales area where you can buy locally produced goods such as spices and fruit wines.

There is still a lot left to do, but we wanted all of our supporters to know that we are working hard and we will keep you updated. If you have visited us and want to help, please make a donation at guiasunidos.org and put in a good word for Centro PUMA on Tripadvisor, Facebook, or Google Maps!

Stay safe and healthy!

A garden for Doña Gladys

A new project the PUMAs have been working on is creating organic gardens for families who have an interest in growing, using, and selling produce beyond the typical stuff found in markets on the island. One PUMA guide, Edgard Condega, has a degree in agronomy and is very excited to share his organic gardening knowledge as a way to bring better nutrition to the island's residents and visitors through more sustainable farming.

Edgard and the PUMAs started building the first garden as a pilot project recently, but have done an immense amount of work already.

First order of business: a stout fence. Chickens and
pigs roam freely here, so penning in plants is the only
way to guarantee they'll grow.

One of the reasons for the fence
visited us while we worked...

Most of the beds had been prepared in the previous weeks, but it definitely is a process to build them.

First, loosening the dirt is a must on this volcanic island. Fortunately, this particular spot had been a farm for plantains (a large monoculture crop here), so the ground was relatively easy to work.

Elieth breaks soil with a
barra (spud bar).

Once the soil is the proper texture, other additives are mixed in as needed including sand, compost, and ash.

The volcanic rock here produces
soil that usually needs its pH
raised, so here, Edgard adds ash.

Some plants go in beds:

Doña Gladys plants some
eggplant seeds.

But larger plants like vines, shrubs, and trees usually go in their own small holes.

Edgard, Elieth, and Ramon Ivan
 plant pepper starts.

Elieth adds stones around the
seedlings to protect them.

It is a fair amount of work to put these together, and nothing is cheap - especially the fence. But if this project works out well, the PUMAs hope to have a stall where the garden owners can sell some of their produce. This garden is our first attempt, so we'll keep you posted on what happens!

The benefits of hard work on a
garden - Doña Gladys let us have
some green coconuts. Yum!

1000 trees

Remember the 1000 bags of dirt from a month ago? 

They have grown: 

We started out giving trees to the kids from our Junior Ranger program to plant and care for at their homes:

But there are still a lot of trees to go! Next, we are working with local partners to plant the trees in areas that need restoration. Our partner organization, Si A La Vida, has a working farm with a forest that was destroyed in the 2017 hurricane Nate. So our Centro PUMA staff gathered kids from our Junior Ranger program, and partnered with kids and staff from Si A La Vida to plant trees.

They planted a total of 120 trees, plus donated an extra 30 to the farm workers to replace losses or plant elsewhere. Their farm is part of a network of forested areas that are habitat to many animals including the endangered yellow-naped amazon parrot. Every native tree here adds a positive benefit to the environment.

It was a day of very hard work in very rocky soil, so many adults came and helped the kids.

But a great experience for the kids to take part in restoration of their local habitat.

 This is still a time of great uncertainty in Nicaragua, so we are proud to be able to create tangible results while offering practical skills to our participants.

And it's fun to see these bags of dirt:

 become this beautiful nursery in a short time with a small investment.

There are still many more trees to plant this year, and we are working on ideas to fund this project next year. Thank you to Si A La Vida, New England Biolabs Foundation, and all of you for your financial and moral support!  You can donate to our project here. 

1000 bags of dirt

Why are we filling up 1000 bags with dirt?

And Why are we enclosing them in chicken wire?

We have collected native seeds, and hand-sifted over 1000 liters of potting soil into planting bags to create a tree nursery at Centro PUMA.

Deforestation is an issue in Nicaragua that can be solved with community effort. The guides of Centro PUMA together with our Junior Rangers are planting 1000 native trees to help offset habitat loss. We aim to plant these trees later this year or next year in yards, farms, and in protected areas to restore lost habitat.

Of the many species that may benefit from these trees, the endangered yellow-naped amazon parrot finds one of its last hopes for recovery on Ometepe island. We are exploring how to work with the community to restore its habitat while combating poaching through education and through economic incentives of ecotourism. 

Come visit Centro PUMA to see our new tree nursery and to check out our other community projects! If you are too far away to visit, you can still be part of the effort by sustaining our project with a donation: about 20 cents helps us grow a tree in our nursery.