Abstract:

Las Diosas is a cooperative of more than three hundred women small farmers spread across northern Pacific coast of Nicaragua. They raise many crops including coffee, Jamaica used for tea, jam and wine, honey, as well as many others depending on the size of the farm, and the location. The president of the cooperative has a process to take new women members out of the kitchen, into the garden, out of the garden, into the field and then to the marketplace where they can become part of the business of selling the farm’s produce.

In the initial visit we ask the leadership team of the cooperative how we could help them. The first thing was to fix a broken coffee roaster. That has been accomplished, the next thing that they wanted was some way to try to retain their daughters on their farms. Technology has increased the lure of the urban areas to rural youth becomes stronger as they can see other young people having a fun time.

One of the problems is that rural schools go to sixth grade and then the secondary schooling is six hours on Saturdays when school is in session. Six hours is 1/5 the time of a normal secondary school and thus many of the daughters lack skills that they might use on the farm or in the city. A second problem is the lack of practical education in the schools of Nicaragua. Many of the teachers in elementary schools were not taught with practical or applied education. Thus they do not know how to adapt the curriculum to the practical.

As their mothers, members of the cooperative, are learning how to be more engaged in the farming business today, the daughters need a practical education to help on the farm or in life. They need to understand macro factors changing their like climate change. While they may enjoy sharing smartphones, they need to learn the types of technology that can advance them in farming, as well as some of the other possibilities that they might find interesting and worth additional years of study. They may need to learn a few words of English or Chinese that could help them get a better job.

Together the leadership of the Cooperative and the authors created the idea of a camp that could be fun for them but at the same time give them some improved skills or information. The idea of having a camp for the daughters of cooperative members is to teach some basic STEM or business ideas and show them that this can be used on their land, their farm. The initial planning for the camp looked at a week long camp. The idea is teach them tools that will be useful in the city or on the farm and learn with them how they might apply on the small farms of their mothers. The goal is to teach them practical tools for both urban and rural settings and explore with them how these can be used on their mothers' small farms.

The paper will be about the process of trying to create a plan for the camp with the women focused on helping their daughters. Amy Smith of MIT gave one of the plenaries at ICERI 2025 and talked about three levels of interaction. Consultation asking locals what they thought of an idea. The second step is what we will try to do, working together to co-create a plan for the camp. As the leadership of Las Diosas becomes more familiar with the technologies and concepts they can then start to lead the development of camp for following years and the colleagues from the United States can consult.

Keywords:

Internal Migration, STEM, Small Farms, Cooperative, Rural Education.