Record Shipment to Nicaragua Targets Women’s Daily Needs

One of my first and most exciting tasks since coming on board as MADRE’s new Helping Hands Coordinator was the coordination of one of our largest shipments of humanitarian aid supplies to date.  These 198 large boxes each brimmed with items for which our sister organizations in Nicaragua have expressed a direct, specific need.  Thanks to MADRE donors, members, friends, interns, and volunteers for your constant support!

The shipment’s contents ranged from such vital everyday items as contacts, eyeglasses, condoms, lubricant, school supplies, and toys to large pieces of medical equipment identified by sister organizations CADPI and Wangki Tangni as particularly useful to women and their families in the North Atlantic region of Nicaragua.  These included nebulizers, crutches, walkers, an intravenous machine, portable toilets, shower chairs, adult diapers for the elderly, and hundreds of assorted medications and first-aid supplies.  

We were also able to send beautiful lengths of leather, silk, polyester, and cotton for the Wangki Tangni Women’s Sewing Collective, an income-generating cooperative made up of 35 Indigenous Miskito women.  The Collective’s garment-making classes significantly expand local women’s resources by empowering them to create clothing for their own families and independent income from sales at local markets and craft fairs.  My thanks again to everyone who helped make this shipment possible; every item in those 198 boxes directly enables women not only to face immediate crises in their communities but to challenge the continuing structures that deny them their basic rights.