Alvaro Molina

The overall motivation to start this long term project was fairly simple: to provide a strong education to local children through small class sizes, quality nutrition and community engagement while simultaneously reducing pollution of the natural biosphere reserve and Maderas National Park with the use of EcoBricks. The Ometepe Bilingual School is built almost solely from 1.5 lt plastic bottles packed full of inorganic waste. Everyone can get involved in cleaning up the rural Mérida community and make a little money by “making” an EcoBrick and exchanging it for 50 cents at the Hacienda Merida. We at Hacienda Mérida consider the education of Nicaragua's population of utmost importance. 40% of the hotel’s profit goes directly toward the Ometepe Bilingual School that we have built here on the hotel property. Our goal is to improve the education in the rural community in which we operate. The Ometepe Bilingual School has grades kindergarten through 4rd grade and plans to expand to 5th grade in 2018. By 2019 our goal is to be kindergarten through 6th This affords them the possibility of a better future. We are fortunate enough to be recipients of laptops for each classroom through the "one laptop per child” initiative. These computer have basic math games, books and other materials crucial to the education of our students. Unfortunately, initiatives such as these simplifies the real deep-seated problems in countries like Nicaragua; discipline, attendance, and family participation in the education process. Free Bilingual elementary Education is provided.