News Bureau

Education Moves Health and Development Forward in Nicaragua


In the municipality of El Tuma-La Dalia, 175 kilometers north of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, local leaders have designed the Educational Plan for Local Development, or Plan Educativo para el Desarrollo Local, which is transforming education into the engine for achieving sustainable local development by focusing on creating human capital.

Of the municipality’s population of about 56,680, more than 85 percent live in rural areas that have few health facilities. Nearly 90 percent of people have no access to safe drinking water, thus finding themselves with no alternative other than to draw their water from rivers or other sources contaminated by the waste products of coffee production, the primary commercial activity in the municipality.

We want to put into place an educational program that will focus not only on the development of our community, but also on the conservation of our environment.


Because of these two problems—inaccessible health services and lack of access to safe drinking water—El Tuma-La Dalia suffers from one of the highest child mortality rates in Nicaragua: 49 deaths per 1,000 live births. The national average is 31 per 1,000 live births.

But through the technical and financial support provided by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) through the PRONICASS Program funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), positive changes are taking place. By designing and promoting the educational plan, PRONICASS is improving the health and educational opportunities of this primarily rural population while addressing environmental concerns.

“We don’t want to continue to rely on traditional education, which is based on memorization and makes no effort to create capabilities in either human beings or the community,” states Juana Palacios, Councilwoman and Coordinator of the Municipal Development Committee’s Social Commission. “We want to put into place an educational program that will focus not only on the development of our community, but also on the conservation of our environment and the creation of a culture of peace. These are some of the things that we are trying to incorporate into this new educational program.”

Local Problems with Local Solutions
“In some areas of El Tuma-La Dalia, people pollute their sole source of water by dumping residual coffee pulp into it. This causes health problems such as diarrhea and skin diseases among municipal residents,” explains Dr. Argentina Parajón, advisor to PRONICASS.

This situation has been analyzed and addressed by the El Tuma-La Dalia Local Development Committee, whose members include local government authorities and civil society leaders, including coffee producers. An agreement has been reached to include a health and environmental conservation component in the Educational Plan for Local Development, implementation of which is scheduled to begin this year.

Prioritizing Education
The municipality also faces continual challenges in education. Claudia Blandón, Municipal Delegate from the Ministry of Education, observes that the region’s problems occur in the areas of school registration, dropout rates, and the overall quality of education.

“School registration totals more than 20,000 from kindergarten through high school, concentrated primarily at the grade-school level, but we have a dropout rate of more than 18 percent in our municipality, which is alarming,” asserts Blandón.

In addition, El Tuma-La Dalia faces problems with grade repetition: for every 10 first-grade students, 4 are held back because of problems with reading and writing.

“With the implementation of this educational plan, we hope to overcome these problems and, in addition, introduce technical education aimed at helping to bring about the sustainable development of our municipality, with its coffee-growing orientation,” concludes Blandón.

Starting last year, the Educational Plan for Local Development has been successfully established in four Nicaraguan municipalities, including El Tuma-La Dalia. The other three municipalities are San José de los Remates, located in the department of Boaco; El Jícaro, in the department of Nueva Segovia; and Kubra Hill, in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region.

All four municipalities have begun to design their educational plans by following the methodology set forth in guidelines prepared with support from PRONICASS and with the participation of technical and managerial staff from the Ministry of Education. Forty more municipalities are developing educational plans, which all of Nicaragua will have in the future.

The Leadership, Management, and Sustainability (LMS) Program implements PRONICASS, the Nicaragua Social Sector Reform Program. The project, which began in 2005, is working to improve Nicaraguans’ health, education, and welfare services by collaborating with the country’s social sector ministries.

Efforts focus first on streamlining administrative processes, institutionalizing systems and norms, and strengthening planning to maximize resources. The project emphasizes the twin principles of planning and budgeting based on results. These principles encourage organizations to clearly connect investments to results, thus closely linking spending with measurable outputs. A second element of the program is participatory planning. Citizens are integrally involved and are encouraged to participate so they fully understand what is being accomplished and with what resources it is being done.