Our education project began in 1984. It is quite a story. The details are here in a chapter of Just Another Lump of Clay called "Dusting Off The Owner's Manual". Click here to read it.
Have you ever been part of a miracle?
In 1984 there were no schools along the war-ravaged Rio Coco in Northeastern Nicaragua. Twenty-two years later, Seek The Lamb’s Project Ezra operates and suports primary schools, grades Kinder thru Six, in fourteen villages. The total enrollment is over 2000 students with 61 indigenous teachers. Forty-Three of these Miskito Indian teachers began their education as kinder/first grade students in Project Ezra schools.
How did it all happen? It was a series of events that were either extraordinary coincidences or a manifestation of the hand of God.
Project Ezra began in 1986 when Michael Bagby, a relief volunteer from Maui, Sharon Washburn, a bi-lingual teacher from Washington, Truman Cunningham and Augusto Vicente, two Miskito Indian refugees, came together with others in a remote village in Honduras.
The group trained four adults to teach classes in refugee communities. A few months later, Victoria Palacios, a professor of education at the university in Tegucigalpa, volunteered to fly out and train these teachers. At the same time churches in California and Washington donated funds for teacher salaries. Over the next two years Project Ezra blossomed into an extensive primary and adult education program for these refugees, despite the lack of electricity, running water, and roads.
Coincidences or the Hand of God?
In one of the most remote corners of the Western Hemisphere live the Miskito Indians, an indigenous people group who live along the Atlantic coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. Access to most parts of this region is limited to airplane, boats, and dugout canoes. The principal “highway” through this region is the Coco River (Rio Coco), the longest river in Central America.
From the early 1700’s, the Miskitos lived under a protectorate of the British government. In 1896, England ceded their interest over this region to the Latino governments of Honduras and Nicaragua, and the Rio Coco became the border between the two countries. In the succeeding century, there have been periods of neglect, exploitation, and political conflict between the Spanish speaking rulers and the Indigenous Tribes along the Atlantic/Caribbean coast.
Moravian and Catholic missionaries first brought Christianity to the Rio Coco in the early 1900’s. The Miskitos readily received the new religion, albeit mixing it with the traditional beliefs of their culture.
In 1980, the Marxist-Sandinista government of Nicaragua initiated a campaign to bring the Miskito Indians into their socialist state. They did this by confiscating all personal boats, motors, and other vehicles, and abolishing the Council of Elders, which had been the de-facto government along the Atlantic Coast. Cubans arrived to take over the public schools. The Cuban brought with them a very militaristic curriculum that included drawings of AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades in their math books (two AK-47 + three grenades = ___).
Their attempts to militarize the Miskito culture, along with the confiscation of land and other private property met with resistance. Armed with bow and arrows, .22 caliber hunting rifles, and lances, the Miskitos organized an armed fight force, called the Yatama. As a result, the Sandinistas began a relocation program of all the villages along the remote Rio Coco. This “relocation” resulted in the destruction of 104 villages, where homes were burned, fruit trees cut, and cattle killed, along with many individuals who resisted. In the next two years, over 60,000 Miskito fled across the river to neighboring Honduras. About 40,000 ended up in United Nations refugee camps, with the remainder living in the swampy/savannah area along the border.
In 1984, Michael Bagby traveled from Maui with a relief team to deliver personal relief supplies donated by individuals and churches on Maui. What was supposed to be a two- week trip was extended to over a year due to the remoteness of the area, and the logistical challenges of moving cargo by aircraft and boat. Michael was working with Truman Cunningham, a Miskito refugee who helped in coordinating the relief effort.
During the summer of 1985, another Miskito refugee named Augusto Vicente, ask Michael and Truman for help in starting a school for refugee children. Augusto had been a teacher in Nicaragua before the war. At this point, there had not been education available for five years in many refugee villages. We purchased boxes of pencils and notebooks for Augusto, and he began teaching classes.
The following year, Sharon Washburn, a bi-lingual teacher from Maple Valley Washington, arrived in Honduras looking for a village to open a school. She spent a month helping us train teachers, and we began classes in four villages.
While looking for curriculum in Tegucigalpa, Michael met a very prominent professor of education at the Honduran National University named Victoria Palacios. Victoria received her masters in education from New Mexico State and authored a series of primary school textbooks. She agreed to provide us with her curriculum (reading, writing and activities workbooks) and fly out to the Miskitia to train our teachers.
With her help, along with Sharon Washburn, we expanded the school project in 1987 to twelve villages. We also named the effort “Project Ezra”, after a famous Biblical refugee (Ezra 7:10). Victoria, Sharon, and other university professionals continued to provide teacher-training workshops through 1989.
That same year, we received funding from a Dutch refugee organization to hire Thomas Keogh, an American education professional fluent in the Miskito language, to head our school project. Under his leadership, we added an adult literacy education program in 1990, with an emphasis on Bible reading.
When the Sandinista war ended in 1990 with the election of a new, democratic government in Nicaragua, the refugees began returning home. We thought that we also would return to Hawaii and get back to our “normal” life. But God had other plans.
The new Minister of Education in Nicaragua, Dr. Huberto Belli contacted us. He had publicly stated that his goal was to replace the Marxist-Atheistic morality taught in the Sandinista schools with traditional Christians values. He had heard what we were doing and strongly urged us to continue the project on the Nicaraguan side of the river. In April of 1991, we met with the local representative of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education. He told us that they had no money to fund schools in the lower Coco region (where all our schools were located) due to the remoteness of those communities. As a result, we consented to establishing a long-term education project.
Since then, Project Ezra has grown in scope and quality.
In 1992, our teachers began attending professionalization courses offered by the Ministry of Education.
We wrote a Bible curriculum in 1994 in the native language Miskito, that was one of the first of its kind.
Pastor training conferences began 1996, with an emphasis on Christian principles for living./p>
In October/November of 1997, we took Truman, Augusto, and another leader, Onofre Zamora to Israel for a study tour of Biblical sites. Their teacher was renown archeologist and Bible scholar Dr. Randall Smith. This trip expanded their vision for Project Ezra and the Miskito culture.
In 1999, we sent Danilo Cunningham, one of our professional teachers, for a year of training at the School of Worship in Jerusalem, Israel. The following year, 2000, Danilo spent a year working as an intern in children’s ministry at Hope Chapel in Kihei, Maui. With these years of specialized training, Danilo has become very effective in teacher training, Bible studies, and overall administration of Project Ezra.
By 2004, all of our Project Ezra teachers had received their official certification as Primary Education Teachers.
As a result the efforts of many volunteers and financial partners, Project Ezra teachers have proven themselves to be some of the most capable teachers in Nicaragua. Project Ezra students are considered to be among the best educated along the entire Atlantic Coast.
