During our last field trip to Managua, we visited Jubilee House Community, a non-profit organization located in Ciudad Sandino, seven miles west of the city. With 7000 people per square mile, this is the most densely-populated area in Nicaragua (like Detroit but without any high-rise buildings).

Over the last 50 years Ciudad Sandino has served as a permanent site for relocated refugees after natural disasters, including a massive flood in 1968, the 1972 earthquake, and two major hurricanes in the 1990s. People fleeing the violence of the contra war also ended up there in the 1980s.

Jubilee House Community began in 1994 when three adults and three children came to Nicaragua from North Carolina in order to work with the poor. After Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998, they decided to stay and work with the Center for Development in Central America (CDCA) to help fund, plan and implement “self-sufficient, sustainable and democratic” community projects in Nicaragua. The CDCA believes that sustainable economic development means helping people move out of poverty rather than simply cope with it, and that this is the only way workers can have control over the decisions that affect them.

Recent and ongoing projects of the CDCA include worker-owned organic farming cooperatives (sesame, coffee, peanuts, cashews and cotton), low-fee health and dental clinics, potable water, and the production of recycled biodiesel fuel. CDCA also has helped establish cooperatives for the ginning, baling, spinning and sewing of organic cotton products.

During our visit we watched and talked to members of the cotton spinning cooperative (Genesis), which is building its own factory. Each member has put in over 1000 hours of “sweat equity” (work without pay) over the past two years, and when the plant is finished they will own it free and clear. The members of the cooperative range in age from 21 to 68, and almost all of them are women.

The majority of Jubilee House Community’s funding comes from individual and small group donations in the United States. For more information on Jubilee House and the CDCA, visit http://www.jhc-cdca.org/