Unless you’ve stayed up all night studying capital cities for a pub quiz, it’s safe to say you won’t have heard of Puerto Cabezas, the small, but bustling, urban centre of the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua.
The city, better known as Bilwi in the local Miskito language, can be a tough place to live. Power outages are rampant and road access is patchy, schools are overcrowded and the costs of basic supplies can be exorbitant. For Bilwi’s youth, the traps of drugs and gang violence are all too easy to get caught up in.
Surrounded by rivers and lagoons and facing out on to an Atlantic sea-scape, good water, ironically, is hard to come by. Just 20% of Bilwi can tap into the limited municipal water supply, with public waterways and streams visibly polluted. Only half of the city’s population has access to toilets.
It may not seem like gang violence and a lack of clean water are pieces of the same puzzle, but one innovative WaterAid programme has found a way to fit them together.
Set up in 2013, this imaginative project seeks out teens who have dropped out of school, face exceptional challenges at home, or are at risk of involvement with drugs and gangs, and offers them the chance to become skilled entrepreneurs.
The teenagers who take part are taught the masonry and plumbing skills needed to build wells and toilets, and work with a psychologist to help resolve social and emotional issues that may be holding them back in their lives.
The project also gives them the knowledge to establish their very own plumbing businesses, meaning that there can be a long-term change in both their lives and in their communities.\
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