WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2009
Links
The photo is of the late Betty Stewart of the Merced-Somoto Sister City Project with a group of students in Somoto.
Alliance for Global Justice
It is the mission of the Alliance for Global Justice to achieve social change and economic justice by helping to build a stronger more unified grassroots movement. We recognize that the concentration of wealth and power is the root cause of oppression requiring us to work together across ideologies, issues and communities. The Alliance nurtures organizations seeking fundamental change in international and national conditions that disempower people, create disparities in access to wealth and power, poison the earth, and plunder its resources.
We support locally-based grassroots organizing by sharing political analysis, mobilizing for direct action, monitoring the centers of corporate and government power, expanding channels of communication, and sharing skills and infrastructure. Our commitment to solidarity and to non-hierarchical democratic process enables us to respectfully listen and respond to each other within the movement.
Member projects include the Nicaragua Network, the Venezuela Solidarity Network, Campaign for Labor Rights and our joint project, Respect for Democracy.
For Travel and Volunteer Opportunities in Nicaragua, click here.
Local and state-wide US Solidarity and Sister City Groups
The Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN)
The WCCN is a nation-wide, non-profit, membership-supported organization working in partnership with Nicaraguans to promote social and economic justice through alternative models of development and activism.
Peaceworks New Jersey
Peaceworks New Jersey works with the people of the Americas, in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and in communities in the United States in a common struggle to promote justice, human rights, and sustainable economies. Within the US, it informs the public about Latin America and helps forge a movement for progressive change, empowering people to act for justice throughout the Americas.
Women's Empowerment Network - Dorothy Granada
The Women's Health Center was established in 1991 in the rural Nicaraguan village of Mulukuku as a response to the demands of the organized women for adequate reproductive health care for themselves and other women and their children. Dorothy Granada joined the Center as its director at its inception. In her work in the Clinic, she stresses the principles of nonviolence.
Casa Baltimore/ Limay
This friendship city project, linking Baltimore, MD, with San Juan de Limay, began in 1985. Activities include delegations, a microcredit fund, sustainable agriculture, housing construction and repair, support for a child nutrition center, women's cooperatives and grassroots advocacy for alternatives to corporate globalization. Contact Information: Barbara Larcom
(410) 662-6292
casabaltimorelimay@yahoo.com
The New Haven/León Sister City Project
The New Haven/León Sister City Project is a progressive, binational, grassroots organization that fosters a partnership between the communities of Greater New Haven, Connecticut and León, Nicaragua. We work to form fair and respectful relationships between the people of our two cities. Through delegations and other exchanges, we strive to understand and celebrate our respective cultures.
Contact Information: Jean Silk
(203) 562-1607
nh@newhavenleon.org
Cuidad Hermana Task Force of Metro Justice (Rochester/ El Sauce)
Our projects help students in El Sauce afford shoes and books so that they can attend schools; some of our projects improve health conditions in the community; and some of our projects lend money to individuals to help them renew a farm or start a small business.
Contact Information: info@pregnantcow.com
Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association
The goals of the group are to develop people-to-people contacts, support educational, technical and cultural exchanges and carry out projects of mutual interest and benefit. Since 1990 the Association has imported sustainable coffee from its sister island of Ometepe in Nicaragua. It is called Café Oro de Ometepe, and you can order it from the group's web page.
Contact Information: Kim and Ela Esterberg
(206) 842-8148
Kim@bosia.org
Bend-Condega Friendship Project
The Bend-Condega Friendship Project, now an official sister city relationship between the two towns, promotes understanding between the United States and Nicaragua and between the two communities. Projects include visits by community leaders of the two communities to the partner's country and assistance on the part of the Bend community to health and other projects in Condega.
Contact Information: Tim Jeffries
(541) 382-9222
Dos Pueblos: New York/ Tipitapa Sister City Project
The Project began in 1987 with a twinning between a group on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with the city of Tipitapa. The project today includes four child feeding centers, a project that promotes the raising of backyard chickens, a community pharmacy, a program for street youth and others.
Contact Information: (646) 610-2215
info@tipitapa.org
Three Americas, Incorporated
Three Americas is a nonprofit public benefit corporation, organized under the Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for charitable purposes. This corporation provides an educational and action organization that links the people of the Americas though cooperative projects supporting social, environmental and economic justice.
Contact Information: P.O. Box 711, Santa Cruz, CA 95061
Ph. (831) 426-2798
Email: ccrcnica@cruzio.com
Norwalk/Nagarote Sister City Project
Since 1986, this project has been a partnership for sustainable community development between the people of Nagarote, Nicaragua and the Greater Norwalk area in Connecticut. For the first 17 years, it was part of the New England Consortium of Sister City Projects; however, the Consortium disbanded in July 2003 and this project now has its own Field Director and office in Nagarote. Nagarote is located between Leon and Managua.
Virginia Auster and Tish Gibbs, Co-Presidents: (203) 846-9288
Email: NNSCP@sistercityproject.org
Finca Esperanza Verde
Finca Esperanza Verde (Green Hope Farm) is a cool, green and tranquil paradise located in the lush mountains of central Nicaragua (1,200 m/ 4000 feet elevation). This farm and reserve run by local farmers offers shade-grown organic coffee, rainforest walks with interpretative trails and other natural wonders. Finca Esperanza Verde is a community-based project run by volunteers from North Carolina and an all-Nicaraguan staff. All profits stay in San Ramón, providing a sustainable and
environmentally-friendly source of income for local people and resources for community projects.
Email:info@durham-sanramon.org,
Telephone: 919-489-1656 (English or Spanish)
Durham-San Ramón Sister Communities
We seek to strengthen our partnership of awareness, friendship, and cooperation between San Ramón, Nicaragua and Durham and other areas of North Carolina through people-to-people exchanges and through social and economic development projects which support justice and our belief in an interdependent, one-world family. 1320 Shepherd Street, Durham, NC 27707 Tel 919-489-1656,
Email: info@durham-sanramon.org
Merced/Somoto Sister Cities
Nicaragua Scholarship Program
Marin Interfaith Task Force on Latin America
Email: mitf@igc.org
Friends of San Juan de Oriente
Sister City project between Sacramento, CA, and San Juan de Oriente in Nicaragua.
Latin America Solidarity Committee of Buffalo
Email: wnypeace@buffnet.net
Nicaragua Center for Community Action (NICCA)
Berkeley, California; Email: nicca@igc.org
Elders for Survival
Burlington-Puerto Cabezas Sister City Project
National Groups with Nicaragua Programs
Quixote Center - Quest for Peace
Quest for Peace is a project of the Quixote Center dedicated to aid and "liberating development" in Nicaragua. This program works in partnership with the Institute of John XXIII and the Central American University (UCA) to build a policy of peace and friendship between the people of Nicaragua and US.
Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance
The Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance is a project of the Quixote Center that celebrates the "art and beauty" of Nicaragua. You can purchase all type of art ranging from boxed card sets to ceramic plates. The proceeds go to the Nicaraguan artists and artisans who created these works.
Ecumenical Program in Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA)
EPICA is a nonprofit, faith-based organization in solidarity with the poor of Central America, Mexico & the Caribbean. EPICA has been a voice of solidarity and partner for grassroots organizations and churches in the Americas for more than 30 years, combining critical social analysis, theological reflection and action for justice.
The Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN)
The WCCN is a nation-wide, non-profit, membership-supported organization working in partnership with Nicaraguans to promote social and economic justice through alternative models of development and activism.
Witness for Peace (WFP)
Witness for Peace works for human rights, peace, justice and sustainable economies through socially responsible travel, personal experience, population education and grassroots activism. Based in Managua, Nicaragua, WFP has maintained a permanent presence in this Central American country since 1983. Over the years, WFP has examined and challenged unjust U.S. policies and corporate practices that hurt the poor majority in Nicaragua. Some of the issues that they address include labor abuses in foreign owned factories, international debt, Free Trade Agreements, effects of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies, environmental implications of globalization, and much more.
El Porvenir
El Porvenir supports self-help, community-initiated water, sanitation, and reforestation projects in Nicaragua. Its goals are: to improve the health of poor people, especially the children, and to reduce infant mortality; to lessen the physical burden on women and children of carrying water: to support self-help, community-initiated efforts in rural villages; to transfer to the villagers skills which they can use to improve their lives; and to preserve the watersheds on which the water projects depend.
IFCO/Pastors for Peace
Pastors for Peace is an ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. Takes caravans of humanitarian aid to Cuba, Mexico, and Central America. Coordinates the scholarship program for US students to attand the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana.
Potters for Peace
Potters for Peace seeks to "build an independent, nonprofit, international network of potters concerned with peace and justice issues. It will maintain this concern principally through interchanges involving potters of the (overdeveloped) North and (underdeveloped) South. PFP aims to provide socially responsible assistance to pottery groups and individuals in their search for stability and improvement of ceramic production, and in the preservation of their cultural inheritance. "
SosteNica
SosteNica promotes sustainable economic and community development through micro-credits designed to strengthen Nicaraguan communities. SosteNica offers socially conscious investors in the US an opportunity to use financial resources constructively to preserve their capital and earn interest while having a positive impact on Nicaragua's economy.
Project Bona Fide
Project Bona Fide works toward sustaining culture through organic agriculture, community outreach, and re-forestation projects in Nicaragua. Our mission is to support improved nutrition and public health through increased access for all to safe and wholesome food and to strengthen and expand the regional farm and food economy. Project Bona Fide was started in 2001 with the purchase of a fallow farm on the volcanic slopes of Ometepe Island in SE Nicaragua. The farm has become a center of regenerative agro-ecology for the region. The Community Center houses a regional library and learning center.
Círculo de Amigas
Circle of Friends is a not-for-profit, secular organization dedicated to educating and empowering girls and women in four barrios of Jinotega, Nicaragua.
International Nicaragua Solidarity Groups
Tortilla con Sal
Tortilla con Sal is an independent news and information source funded by its writers and their supporters. Tortilla con Sal is committed to producing information in solidarity with the Central American countries' impoverished majority from an anti-imperialist point of view. With that commitment in mind, we seek to make available information from a wide range of sources about Nicaragua.
NicaraguaNet
A group which promotes projects and political awareness in Nicaragua. Members are from Austria, Germany, England, Ireland, and Nicaragua.
Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC)
NSC has worked for 25 years with progressive organizations in Britain and Nicaragua to promote social and economic justice and respect for human rights of the people of Nicaragua.
The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in the UK has a great website shop. They sell political and fair trade t-shirts, books, music, DVDs & videos, Nicaraguan coffee, Sandino and Che mugs to drink the coffee from, greetings cards, fair trade crafts and jewelry and lots more! For children and babies there are fair trade Guatemalan & Peruvian clothes, books, story-tapes and t-shirts. Go to: www.nicaraguasc.org.uk/shop/index
Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign
The Wales NSC was set up in 1986 to support the Nicaraguan Revolution and the FSLN (the Sandinistas), who overthrew the dictator Somoza in 1979. Since the mid Eighties the Campaign has made links between trade unions, community groups, churches and educational organizations in Wales and Nicaragua, providing both political solidarity through campaigning and lobbying activities, and practical support through fund-raising for projects.
Associazione Italia-Nicaragua (The Italy-Nicaragua Association)
The Italy-Nicaragua Association (Associazione Italia-Nicaragua) is a solidarity organization based in Milan and active since the Sandinista Revolution. With a staff person in Managua, they report regularly on human and labor rights in Nicaragua, in particular the banana-workers struggle to receive compensation for health damages from the poisonous insecticide, Nemagon. Their website is in Italian only, though they do have English versions of their activist emails.
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Progressive Nicaraguan Groups
CIPRES
This Nicaraguan group concentrates on promoting urban and rural development through community-based alternatives. By fighting globalization, CIPRES tries to ensure that the people of Nicaragua truly benefit from development.
CALPI
The Center for Legal Assistance for Indigenous Peoples (CALPI) advises and represents traditional community authorities and indigenous people in constitutional actions before the Nicaraguan Supreme Court of Justice and before Civil Judges for the defense of their communal ancestral lands protected by law. It also establishes alliances with international NGOs to introduce the cases before the Interamerican Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States.
Centro Humboldt
Centro Humboldt is a non-governmental Nicaraguan organization founded in 1990. Its main goals include promoting territorial development and environmental management. By strengthening scientific methods, this group promotes development that respects both the environment and the people.
Centro de Estudios Internacionales [Center for International Studies]
The Center for International Studies works towards peace and economic justice at a local, national, regional and global level, by creating networks and working with the people of Nicaragua.
Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH) [Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights]
CENIDH is devoted to protecting and promoting human rights and is one of the leading organizations in its field. It works to ensure that social, political and economic development respects the human dignity and nature.
Proyecto Ecologico FUNDECI/GAIA
Proyecto Ecologico FUNDECI/GAIA supports wild nature in Nicaragua through
scientific research, reforestation, environmental education, and sustainable
rural development in Nicaragua. For more information, visit www.gaianicaragua.org
La Red Nacional de Defensa de los Consumidores [National Consumer Defense Network]
The National Consumer Defense Network works in support of Nicaraguan consumer rights by mobilizing people and groups nation wide as well as writing bills protecting consumers for introduction into the National Assembly and filing court cases. The Network's present campaigns include opposition to the privatization of public utilities such as water and electricity, among other pressing issues.
The Fair Trade Zone
Wholly owned and operated by the members of the Nueva Vida Women's Sewing Cooperative (COMAMNUVI), the Fair Trade Zone worker-owners are the proud makers of sweat-free clothing. They offer high quality garments at competitive prices, giving you the ability to purchase sweat-free clothing while helping to improve the lives of cooperative members. Send an e-mail to: FairTradeZone@gmail.com
Coalitions with which Nicanet is affliated
Latin American Solidarity Coalition (LASC)
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) is an association of national and local US-based grassroots Latin America and Caribbean solidarity groups, many of which have long histories of working with grassroots organizations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. LASC's goal is to define common goals and shared strategies for these groups. It works with several hemisphere-wide issues as well as country-specific topics.
International ANSWER Coalition
The ANSWER coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is an association of various groups who work to put an end to war and racism through out the world. Nicanet is one of the founding members and is on the advisory committee of the coalition.
Stop CAFTA Coalition
The Stop CAFTA coalition worked to stop the Central American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. The governments of Central America were forced to concede to the demands of the Bush administration on most key elements of the agreement. The Coalition continues to monitor the effects of the agreement by releasing annual reports and has supported the people of Costa Rica in their efforts to resist implementation of the agreement.
The Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
The Latin America Working Group is one of the nation's longest standing coalitions dedicated to foreign policy. The Latin America Working Group and its sister organization, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, carry out the coalition's mission to encourage US policies towards Latin America that promote human rights, justice, peace and sustainable development. As a coalition, LAWG represents the interests of over 60 major religious, humanitarian, grassroots and policy organizations to decision makers in Washington.
Jubilee USA Network
The Jubilee USA Network began as Jubilee 2000/USA in 1997 when a diverse gathering of people and organizations came together in response to the international call for Jubilee debt cancellation. Now over 60 organizations [one of these is the Nicaragua Network] including labor, churches, religious communities and institutions, AIDS activists, trade campaigners and over 9,000 individuals are active members of the Jubilee USA Network. This strong, diverse and growing network is dedicated to working for a world free of debt for billions of people.
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General Activism and Environmental Links
Campaign for Labor Rights (CLR)
CLR is a bridge between local activists and many of the major organizations initiating campaigns for labor rights around the world and here at home.
STITCH
STITCH is a network of US women unionists, organizers, and activists that seeks to build connections between Central American and US women organizing for economic justice.
US/Labor Education in the Americas Project
US/LEAP is an independent non-profit organization that supports economic justice and basic rights for workers in Central America, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Mexico.
Global Exchange
Global Exchange is an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political and social justice. Since its founding in 1988, it has increased the US public's global awareness while building partnerships worldwide.
50 Years is Enough: US Network for Global Economic Justice
50 years is enough is a network that counts over 200 U.S. grassroots, women's, solidarity, faith-based, policy, social- and economic-justice, youth, labor and development organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through education and action, the Network is committed to transforming the international financial institutions' policies and practices, to ending the outside imposition of neo-liberal economic programs, and to making the development process democratic and accountable.
Witness for Peace
Witness for Peace works for human rights, peace, justice and sustainable economies through socially responsible travel, personal experience, population education and grassroots activism. Other than in Nicaragua, WFP works and offers programs in Colombia, Mexico and Cuba.
Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART)
The Alliance for Responsible Trade is a national network of labor, family-farm, religious, women's, environmental, development and research organizations that promotes equitable and sustainable trade and development.
Mexico Solidarity Network
The Mexico Solidarity Network is a coalition of 88 organizations struggling for democracy, economic justice and human rights on both sides of the US-Mexico border. The program of the Network increases grassroots democratic spaces, and develops grassroots consciousness and organizing skills. The program also increases effective contacts between grassroots activists and politicians.
Solar Cookers International
Solar Cookers International assists communities to use the power of the sun to cook food and pasteurize water for the benefit of people and environments. Solar Cookers International (SCI) spreads solar cooking awareness and skills worldwide, particularly in areas with plentiful sunshine and diminishing sources of cooking fuel.
Rainforest Action Network
Rainforest Action Network campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through grassroots organizing, education and non-violent direct action.
Pesticide Action Network
PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. It links local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to insure the transition to a just and viable society.
Sustainable Harvest International
SHI has been providing alternatives to slash-and-burn farming since 1997 to farmers in Nicaragua, Panama, Belize and Honduras as it is the leading cause of rainforest destruction in the region. By introducing sustainable land-use practices, farmers can take control of their environmental and economic destinies.
The Global Justice Ecology Project
Global Justice Ecology Project advances global justice and ecological awareness by identifying issues, creating strategies, organizing campaigns, building alliances and disseminating photographic images that demonstrate the interconnections between the social and the ecological, promoting a crucial holistic analysis to unify and strengthen movements.
Global Response
At the request of indigenous peoples and grassroots organizations, Global Response organizes urgent international letter campaigns to help communities prevent many kinds of environmental destruction. Global Response involves young people as well as adults in these campaigns to develop in them the values and skills for global citizen cooperation and earth stewardship.
Forest Conservation Portal
Forest Conservation Portal works to end deforestation, preserve primary and old-growth forests, conserve and sustainably manage other forests, conserve water and climatic systems and commence the age of ecological restoration.
Fair Trade Sites
Café Campesino
This link enables you to order fair trade coffee and tea. While enjoying the richness of organically produced coffee, you will be supporting social and environmental change.
The Fair Trade Zone
Wholly owned and operated by the members of the Nueva Vida Women's Sewing Cooperative (COMAMNUVI), the Fair Trade Zone worker-owners are the proud makers of sweat-free clothing. They offer high quality garments at competitive prices, giving you the ability to purchase sweat-free clothing while helping to improve the lives of cooperative members.
Friends of the Third World
In addition to job-training for needy people in Fort Wayne, the house of the Friends of the Third World helps sell products made by exceptionally enterprising groups in the Third World, including coffee from Nicaragua and fruitcakes from Georgia. They also support projects like helping Nicaraguan Medical Aid and a Philippine amputee project.
Nectar of Life Coffee Company
Nectar of Life Coffee Co. is a gourmet roaster of 100% shade grown, certified organic Fair Trade coffees.
Rage Baby T-shirts
Fun, off-beat baby t-shirts. ALL of ragebaby's t-shirts are made by the Fair Trade Zone, a worker-owned cooperative in Nicaragua! The quality of these tees is excellent. And now, ALL ragebaby tees are made of 100% organic cotton!
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Other Links
Arte Nicaragüense - a non profit organization which provides a free presence in the Internet for the Nicaraguan artist
Additional sites for Nicaraguan art:
http://rubendario.info
http://www.yoyita.com
Giorgio Trucchi's news blog (in Spanish). One of the best foreign journalists writing in Nicaragua today, Trucchi is also a member of the Italy-Nicaragua Association.
Hardworking Guitar - Echoes of silence
Institute for Central American Development Studies - "ICADS is a center for study, research, and analysis of Central American social and environmental issues. We focus on women's issues, economic development, environmental studies, public health, education, human rights, and wildlife conservation."
The Latin Americanist - A blog dedicated to Latin American current events, created by a grad student in Latin American studies at NYU. It is non-commercial and is solely a forum for students of the region to chat and share ideas.
Midge Quandt - Solidarity activist and historian
Sandino Vive - "This site is a memorial dedicated to the victims of genocide committed by the somocist regime in 1979, and to the more than 30,000 victims of the terrorist actions to which Nicaragua was subjected from 1980 to 1989. The main objective of this site is educational, as a tool for students and researchers interested in the history and culture of Nicaragua." The site includes the achievements and methods of the National Literacy Campaign, Nicaraguan murals, documents related to the case Nicaragua vs. US (1984-1991) at the International Court of Justice (World Court), and other documents about recent Nicaraguan history.
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