FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 22, 2004
CONTACT: Lonna Harkrader, 919 489-1656
harkrader@mindspring.com
DURHAM - Finca Esperanza Verde (Green Hope Farm) Eco-lodge and Nature Preserve, created out of an abandoned coffee farm in the mountains of central Nicaragua by a Durham, North Carolina non-profit organization and their Nicarguan partners, has won a $20,000 Sustainable Tourism Award for Conservation from Smithsonian Magazine and Travelers Conservation Foundation in a worldwide competition.
The winners will receive their award at the USTOA conference in Hollywood, Florida, on December 6, 2004, and will be highlighted in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE.
The Durham organization, Sister Communities of San Ramón, Nicaragua, joined by Nicarguan partners have been developing a tourism operation in the rural mountainous county of San Ramón, Nicaragua since 1998. Durham volunteers created the sister community relationship in 1993 in an effort to relieve persistent unemployment and poverty in one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.
The project includes:
- Marketing of shade-grown organic coffee grown by small farmers and cooperatives;
- conservation of the mountain region through reforestation and restoration
of wildlife habitat; and
- a multi-facility eco-lodge, which brings money into the local economy, and
prompts the creation of related local businesses, and
- many related efforts, including a water system, school programs and more.
Finca Esperanza Verde was named Best Eco-Lodge in 2004 by the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism.
The Nicaraguan Minister of Tourism, Lucía Salazar, who launched a nation-wide campaign to encourage Nicaraguans to vote in the Smithsonian Magazine on line competition said,
"It is the first time Nicaragua is the winner in a world wide competition. The Sustainable Tourism Award for Conservation bestowed on Finca Esperanza Verde Ecolodge and Nature Preserve gives a positive image to our country currently promoting itself as a tourist destination, especially with European and North American tourists who usually seek destinations friendly to the environment. This is an excellent opportunity to let people know about our country. The award will help to change the negative image that we have, it will attract more tourism which will permit the creation of more employment and it is of immense pride for Nicaragua."
Finca Esperanza Verde Eco-lodge, built of handmade brick with solar electric panels on all the roof tops and two solar refrigerators in the kitchen, has a 100 mile view across the Dariense mountain range. It is a cool, green and tranquil paradise at 1,200 meters/4,000 feet elevation. From the 18 bed lodge visitors may bird watch while seated in a rocking chair or stroll through nearby hiking trails to view 150 species of birds and other wildlife. The lodge includes two cabins with bath and shower which each sleep six people in comfortable bunk beds and three private rooms with shared bath and shower. There is an 8 bed dormitory located next to the butterfly farming operation nearby.
Eco-tours to San Ramón are organized by former tourists who want to introduce others to rural Nicaraguan where a casual horse back ride can turn into an opportunity to visit the horse owner’s farm to meet his family. And where a hike through the shade grown coffee farm can turn into a lesson in how to cure rashes and stomach ache with herbal medicines growing along the path as well as a dip in a secluded pool below a waterfall.
None of the revenues from the eco-tours is taken out of San Ramón. It goes to local community development projects, to support the farm and to pay for a broad array of services including home stays with local families. In addition, ten percent of the income from eco-tours is donated to a community to build a school or water project.
Recent eco-tour groups from the Triangle area include scientists from the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, members of the NC Audubon Society, returned Peace Corps volunteers, Southwest Durham Rotary Club, Durham Academy, Raleigh Charter High School, and East Chapel Hill High School. Educators consider a week’s visit to the farm and town of San Ramón a unique opportunity for their students to live with a Nicaraguan family, to speak Spanish and to teach their Nicaraguan peers some English.
The eco-lodge is the centerpiece of an expanding network of projects in San Ramón funded by Sister Communities of San Ramón, Nicaragua and the organizations and individuals that support it. Finca Esperanza Verde has strong ties with the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, which has imported butterfly pupa raised on the farm and leaf cutter ants for the museum’s well-known Butterfly House. The Southwest Durham Rotary Club has donated over $100,000 to community development projects in San Ramón over the past 10 years, including $50,000 to build a new water system for the urbanized area.
In addition, projects including a free music school, sports programs for children, a high school teacher’s salary, a librarian’s salary, an activity program for senior citizens, art classes for youth, adult literacy program, a physical therapist for the handicapped children’s center, and a sports program and medical equipment for the health center have been funded by Durham congregations including Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Watts Street Baptist Church, Duke Chapel Congregation, and Durham Friends Meeting, as well as other organizations and individual donors.
The project has prompted villagers to become entrepreneurs, launching micro-enterprises such as cooking classes on local dishes wrapped in banana leaves, workshops where tourists turn a pile of tropical seeds into attractive necklaces, a network of guest house families, and Nicaraguan folk music groups. The income is quickly converted into new shoes for school, musical instruments, and improved health care.
Two of the founders of the sister community partnership, Richard and Lonna Harkrader, lead eco-tours to San Ramón every year when they have the opportunity to bring the challenges of life in a poor area of the world into sharp focus for the eco-tour participants. Richard, an architect and renewal energy promoter, designed the all buildings at Finca Esperanza Verde including the butterfly house. Both were Peace Corps volunteers in Africa in the late 60’s and own and rent passive solar apartments with solar water heaters in Durham.
The ongoing hope for eco-tourism in San Ramón is to protect the mountains from deforestation through increased appreciation for the economic benefits eco-tourism brings. The words of Ernesto Gonzalez, naturalist guide at Finca Esperanza Verde, are a perfect expression of this attitude shift, "When I first started working at Finca Esperanza Verde, I was like other farmers around here in my lack of appreciation for the natural world. I would whack into trees with my machete as I walked along to pass the time just like all the rest. Now I have changed. The tourists and natural scientists who have come to San Ramón have shown so much respect and fascination for the natural world I used to take for granted, that now I, too, value the wildlife and plants around me. It is like a new world before my eyes. And the income I make as a naturalist guide, which I have been trained to be thanks to this project, helps my family have a better life."
The Smithsonian Magazine/Travelers Conservation Foundation contest is detailed in a press release at http://www.sustainabletourismawards.com.
Other contacts:
Lucía Salazar, Nicaraguan Minister of Tourism. <lsalazar@intur.gob.ni>
High resolution digital photographs are available.