Rogelia Chac Choc tending to strawberries on her farm in Guatemala.
Photo by Michael Kienitz.

MicroPlace has added the ability to give it's microfinance investments as gifts to friends or loved ones.

Join Working Capital for Community Needs as we visit Nicaraguan organizations that empower communities and improve the quality of life of thousands of people through alternative economic projects. Witness the effect of providing microcredit to small urban and rural producers, cooperatives involved in the fair-trade coffee movement, and organizations working with the urban poor.

Opening 5:30 p.m Friday, October 16th, 2009.
Runs through Nov. 15th , 2009

The Pyle Center
702 Langdon St., Madison, Wisconsin (Note: Langdon St. will be closed on 10/16 for UW's Homecoming parade. Please plan accordingly.)

$10 suggested donation
$5 student suggested donation

As you may have heard, the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua is now officially Working Capital for Community Needs. The name change comes at a poignant time in WCCN's history, our 25th anniversary. In 2009, we invite you to look for exciting changes as we begin lending capital to microfinance institutions in additional Latin American countries.

I just returned from our June study tour of Nicaragua, which focused on women’s empowerment. While there, we witnessed the deterioration of the political situation, as it becomes more and more polarized. In fact, the institutional pact between the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) and the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) has continued to erode state institutions and is severely damaging the democratic gains Nicaragua has made over the last 18 years. The latest action by the FSLN-PLC pact has resulted in the cancellation of the legal status of two political parties, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) and the Conservative Party (PC).

by Russ Rutter
NICA Fund investor and study tour participant

In January of 2008, my wife and I joined WCCN’s winter study tour to Nicaragua in order to learn more about the country and about the ways in which micro-loans help Nicaraguan people build better lives for themselves and their children. We paid a visit to an agency called Habitar, whose mission is to improve housing. There, our group watched a video that showed men, women, and children as, with minimal machinery, they built, moved, and piled up large wirework containers of rock called gabeones. The folks dwelling in this barrio had built gabeones, stretching for almost 500 yards down the river­bank, that hold back floodwaters—but that also bear witness to their desire to brighten the corner where they live.