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Nicaragua and the autonomous regions Introducing the HoverAid Hovercare project |
Introducing the Hovercare project
The 1995 British Hovercraft Expedition to Nicaragua gave a tantalising glimpse of the way that the river systems of the Atlantic Autonomous Regions of Eastern Nicaragua could be used as effective transport routes - and lead to Squadron Leader Mike Cole, the expedition leader, setting up the Peace and Hope Trust, creating a real link between churches in the UK and USA and impoverished communities in Nicaragua.
Yael Velleman will be working with HoverAid as part of our new Hovercare Nicaragua project. Yael has lived in and researched the communities of the eastern Caribbean coastal regions of Nicaragua over several years, and is returning there in March to investigate one of the major problems facing those communities - effective access to healthcare.
Yael, along with two other Peace and Hope volunteers, Steve Hubbard, and Tony Pitt, decided to investigate Mike's original vision of using hovercraft to address issues of poverty in Nicaragua. With HoverAid's background in using hovercraft to enable NGO's to tackle issues of poverty, and the fact that River Rover 501 (now in Madagascar) was involved inthe 1995 Nicaragua expedition, it was obvious we should join forces.
The first stage of this is to undertake thorough research of the root causes of poverty in the autonomous regions. One of these root causes is evidently associated with healthcare options, and we want to determine to what extent access to improved transport, either for communities, or health care providers, could improve the situation. We also want to find out what those communities see as their priorities.
Poverty has many causes, and lack of access to markets, representation, government services, finance, and jobs are just some of the causes - the reason we are investigating barriers to access to healthcare is that all of these other issues can play a part - and all may be affected by difficulties in simply from one place to another.