We asked Carolyn Barrett, SCSRN Board member, to share her reasons for joining the SCSRN team and what the experience has meant to her. How Nicaragua? Why Nicaragua? It all started when I retired from a 30-year teaching career at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was accepted to serve in the… Read More →

Everyone who has ever participated in our cultural immersion eco-tours has visited Los Pipitos San Ramón, and for many, it is the defining experience of their stay in Nicaragua. Since 1992, this center for children with disabilities has been transforming the lives of not only the children  that they work with, but also their families… Read More →

Our founder, Lonna Harkrader, reflects on SCSRN’s beginnings. Twenty-seven years ago, June 1993, a group of peace-loving activists from North Carolina visited San Ramón, in hopes of finding a community that would be interested in forming ties of peace and friendship with us. We had been involved in opposing the Contra War, one of the… Read More →

I imagine that the majority of you reading this are sheltering at home, as many of us are here in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, most Nicaraguans do not have the luxury of working from home, so many of the people that we work with in San Ramón have to continue to expose themselves daily as Covid-19 slowly… Read More →

Nancy Martin visited San Ramón on one of our cultural immersion ecotours in February, with the group Active People on the Move. Below are her reflections from her trip. For the past several weeks I have been able to think and talk of little else but the seven days I spent in Nicaragua on a… Read More →

Lonna Harkrader founded Sister Communities of San Ramón, Nicaragua with her husband Richard in 1993. They come down every year and spend some time in San Ramón to work with us and visit their long-time friends. I asked Lonna to share a little about makes San Ramón so special to her. Here is her answer…. Read More →

In general, all non-profits share certain day-to-day struggles: maintaining funding from year-to-year, stretching dollars to cover project costs, trying to keep operating costs down while still running an efficient organization, etc. But perhaps one of the most insidious and toxic problems is mission creep. Mission creep is when an organization gradually moves away from its… Read More →

This year, we welcomed Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), Kate Crowley, to our Board of Directors. As an organization founded by RPCVs and led by yours truly, another RPCV, Kate is like a duck in water at SCSRN. We invited her to write about why she decided to get involved with our work. As a… Read More →

As anyone who works in the non-profit sector can tell you, projects rarely go exactly as you plan them. None of us like to brag about our failures, but let’s face it: no matter how lofty your goals are or how meticulously you have planned your project, making a real, sustainable change involves a lot… Read More →

In our journey to realize our vision of a world where communities create and value cross-cultural partnerships, we sometimes cross paths with groups and organizations that transform our steps into leaps. One such group is the South Granville Rotary Club. This March, we completed our third project together, installing electrical systems in three rural schools…. Read More →

It’s been a tough year for Nicaragua. Political turmoil has affected every aspect of life, and that includes our work. We continue to maintain our policy of remaining apolitical, but there’s no denying the impact that this conflict has had and will continue to have on the poorest communities of Nicaragua, including the rural communities… Read More →