| Helping shrimpers succeed in Nicaragua |
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Women’s shrimping cooperative a model supplier in Nicaragua
Cooperativa Lucrecia Lindo, a women’s shrimping cooperative in far western Nicaragua, has weathered hurricanes and cultural biases in a male-dominated industry. Today, shrimp production has become a path out of poverty for its members who persisted, aided by private investors and public donors, including USAID’s Enterprise and Employment program (E&E, managed by CARANA). Beyond its own success, Lucrecia Lindo is adding an onsite laboratory and classroom trainings for surrounding producers, making it a model for shrimp production in the region.
The cooperative has come a long way since 1978, when 36 women from the town of Puerto Morazan founded Lucrecia Lindo with $360 from an English donor with which they purchased shovels and machetes. The women would wake up as early as 3 AM to prepare their children’s breakfast before going to the fields to prepare the land, dig channels and build mounds to create ponds for the shrimp. Twice, hurricanes wiped out their entire operation, which the women rebuilt from scratch—taking on debts rising into the hundreds of thousands of US dollars. The founders fought an equally taxing battle within their own families: “Husbands used to tell [the first women], ‘You keep your project or you keep me,’” said founding member and treasurer Buenaventura Urey. In the end, 20 of the original 36 abandoned the endeavor; most of the women who pushed through were single mothers. Following Hurricane Felix in 2007, Serviconsa, one of Nicaragua’s biggest shrimp exporters, stepped in to finance the recovery of Lucrecia Lindo and its other cooperative suppliers. In 2011, E&E joined the effort, providing technical assistance for reconstruction, paying for two-way radios and an internet antenna (the remote cooperative doesn’t have public telephone access), and designing a model of access to credit for the shrimp producers. The USAID project teamed with the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua to set up an onsite laboratory where the cooperative can test shrimp for diseases. E&E also trained area cooperatives in shrimp production best practices in a classroom at Lucrecia Lindo. Soon after the trainings began, the cooperatives began showing an increase in productivity—great news for their investor, Serviconsa, which needs stable suppliers for its export shipments to the US and Europe.
“The times of back-breaking hard labor are gone,” said founding member Gloria Varela. “Now we only supervise. We work with our minds and everything we have learned throughout all these years of struggle.” Varela—who only completed the first grade herself—is now the proud mother of two daughters studying at college. And the benefits are obvious for the community as well, she said, adding: “Today we are job creators: 21 men from around Puerto Morazan work for us.” Published January 2012 Share through your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
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