Spencer
Bristol Engineering and its employees are proud to play a small part
in bringing hope and self sufficiency to the village of
Villa Catalina in the central region of Nicaragua. Along
with financial contributions to programs delivering humanitarian
relief, some of our employees have served as hands-on volunteers
helping build homes, a school, and other much-needed
projects.
About
Villa Catalina
The
families of Villa Catalina are victims of Hurricane Mitch that
struck Nicaragua in 1998, dumping nearly a years' worth of
rain in one week. Massive flooding caused the side of a
volcano to collapse in a horrific landslide that buried an
area of nearly
ten
miles under many feet of mud. Several farming villages
were completely buried by the mud and 
more than
3,000 people were
killed.
Thousands more were left homeless in one of the
world's poorest regions where the average person lives on
less than $1 a day.
The
impoverished government relocated hundreds of
homeless families to El Limonal--literally, a
garbage dump--where for years they endured unimaginable hardship,
foraging in the dump for food, water, and shelter.
In 2003
a group of volunteers from Buford, Georgia
learned of their desperate plight and began raising funds
to purchase land where a new village could be built. A
year later the families were relocated to the farmland that would become Villa
Catalina.
For the
next two years, each family lived in a temporary shelter
called a bodega--a tarp enclosed, windowless structure with a tin roof--while construction on their
new village was underway. With the help of volunteers,
each family built their own 500
square foot cinder block home at a cost of about $3,800
each. Construction costs were raised through numerous fund
raising campaigns in the Atlanta area over the course of nearly
four years. The final home was completed in December, 2006
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In Villa
Catalina: Susan Mohr (with pal Kenia), Morley Spencer, Doug
Bristol |
The
families of Villa Catalina are now living in clean and healthy conditions
but there is still much to be done in this region. Indescribable poverty and hardship are
everywhere and even the
smallest contribution can make an enormous difference. The
current initiative to assist the people of Central Nicaragua is
the "Pay it Forward" program in which a needy family is given a
donated farm animal and they in turn pay the favor forward by
giving half the offspring the animal produces to a neighbor in need.
To learn more about the
story of Villa Catalina or to make a contribution to the
non-profit organization providing practical assistance to
the people of Nicaragua, visit www.amigosforchrist.org.
