Help us to make dental care accessible for all Northern Nicaraguans!
Palm trees, perfect waves, friendly people and sunshine all year round… That’s generally what you think about Nicaragua. On the flip side, Nicaragua is also one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Nearly 48% of the population lives in poverty and 17% in extreme poverty. This has many consequences for the area and its people. Are you curious what you can do to help? In our community blogs, we’ll explain!
How does Surfing Nahua play a role in this?
Surfing Nahua is aware that tourism and real estate can have a huge impact on a small surf town, like Aposentillo. For that reason, we are focused on the sustainable development of this area and community. One of the ways we do this is through supporting a number of vital community projects.
For the majority of these projects, we partner with Margarita Boren. She came to the area 15 years ago to do missionary work and has since done everything to make a difference in this impoverished coastal community. She has set up many cool and interesting projects, such as a sponsored health clinic where the locals get almost free healthcare and service trips for American PTT veterinarian and nurse students. For the poorest kids in the area, she arranged a school bus, Saturday School and she leads a young leader workshop. Her efforts have increased school attendance from below 50% to above 90%!
Her latest dream is to make dental care accessible to everyone in the Aposentillo area! She wants to do this by setting up a dental clinic, where she can provide dental care for an insignificant amount, educate future local dentists and start dental care classes on the local preschool in the area.
Are you wondering, “Why does the Dental Care in Nicaragua need help?”
Due to the underemployment and lack of income in Nicaragua, many people have to live off only $2 per day! Raising a family from this amount of money is more than a great challenge. Over time, many local people didn’t only stick with their traditional diets and started eating more sugary, processed and junk food because it is easy and sometimes cheaper. Some people started replacing nutritious food by drinking a lot of colas or pure sugar water to be able to get enough energy during the day. Can you imagine what this means for the Nicaraguan teeth?
Any dentist in the western world will tell you that your dental care and diet is very important, but what they not exactly explain is why it is so important. Well, an unhealthy mouth may increase your risk of serious health problems such as heart attack, stroke, poorly controlled diabetes and preterm labor. That is why the case for good oral hygiene keeps getting stronger.
In Nicaragua, education and hygiene can definitely use a big upgrade. In fact, the majority of the population has never had or seen a toothbrush! And, if they were given one, it was soon used for other purposes. Dental care is definitely not priority number one and many people in rural areas of developing and underdeveloped areas continue to be deprived of basic oral health care.
If they really need dental care, they have to visit a private clinic, which very expensive and out of range for most of the population. With as result that almost 42,000 kids and adults don’t have dental care or end up in the inexperienced and poorly facilitated hospital to extract their teeth…
But, together we want to make a huge difference!
We have to be grateful for loving and powerful pioneers like Margarita & Dan, who notice this silent cry for help and started making a huge difference.
So far, the construction of the dental clinic has been finished and Margarita also received her first equipment with great thanks to Daniel G. Oliver, DDS (Barry’s dad). After the retired dentist had visited the area and heavily interviewed Margarita he decided that Margarita’s Dental Clinic was the place for his used equipment and that it would be put to good use. Brad Gebert from Stone Yard Inc. packed and loaded the chairs, the X-Ray machine and all the other items that have been donated (valued at $30,000) and wonderful anonymous client plus our friend Joel Willins donated for the shipping ($4750).
Now almost everything is there, we are close to getting the clinic up and running. We only miss the finishing touches, like pressurized air, a well-functioning water system and two set-ups for the chairs to be able to perform drilling and filling.
How can you help?
Have you always enjoyed good dental care; are you thankful for your healthy teeth and touched by this story? Help us raise the last $1000 to get the local dental clinic running and Margarita and Dan’s dream come true to make dental care accessible for everyone in Northern Nicaragua.
- Get in contact now via belen@surfingnahua.com
- Donate to make dental care accessible for everyone in Northern Nicaragua.
- Please help us generate awareness and make some noise by sharing this campaign!
- And, see for yourself how you can make the change!
What’s next?
Read more about other community projects soon!