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One of the greatest challenges faced by the communities on the slopes of the Telica volcano is their physical isolation and remoteness. Access is difficult whether by horseback or in a 4x4 vehicle. For families in these communities this means it is harder to reach health centres and schools, harder to get harvests to market and harder to evacuate in the event of an eruption of the volcano. The active crater is less than 1 km away for some and powerful explosions in 2011 and in 2015 led to evacuations of many villagers on these hillsides.

Poor roads and trails also affect the successful delivery of development projects, as vehicle access is necessary in order to transport materials. Difficult access routes also considerably increase the time it takes to get to the communities and sometimes entire days are lost due to problems in reaching the villages.

Improving access is an essential, though much overlooked aspect of rural development. Improving access to the hillside communities in Telica will have a positive impact on both current activities and future projects working to fight poverty. Work on improving access is almost always supported by impressively high levels of community participation, such is its importance to communities. In Participatory Rural Appraisals whole families expressed the need for better access. The children want to be able to get to school faster. The women would like to be able to feel safer on horseback when they need to take children to the doctor or if they are going to give birth. The men want to be able to use an ox and cart instead of horses all year round to take their harvests to market more quickly. And of course, Nuevas Esperanzas would like to be able to reach the communities more quickly and safely with less damage to its vehicles.

The challenges of access also seem to discourage NGOs from working in these remote communities. Currently Nuevas Esperanzas is the only organisation with a permanent presence. Work on improving access routes has been going on since 2009, but in most cases the budget was only enough to provide temporary access to facilitate transporting materials.

This project will provide a longer term solution to the problems of access to the community of Agua Fría. It will make transporting traditional crops to market easier as well as facilitating the marketing of products from model farms and honey from the apiaries which were introduced through Nuevas Esperanzas agroecology programme over the last few years. These projects aim to diversify production and provide alternative sources of income for the communities in an environmentally sustainable way. This project will help farmers from Agua Fría transport their produce to the point of sale.

Agua Fría was the community most affected by the volcanic eruptions in 2011 and 2015. The only existing evacuation route was directly hit by airborne incandescent rocks weighing more than 100 kg during the eruptions in 2015. These rocks travelled as far as 1.5 km from the volcano. Although the majority of the community lives further from the crater, the existing evacuation routes means that they would have to go towards the erupting volcano in order to be reach rescue vehicles, taking them to within 500 metres of the crater. Improving the access road to El Caracol would facilitate an evacuation of Agua Fría in the only sensible direction away from the erupting volcano!

The method used to improve these rural access routes is relatively simple and environmentally friendly. It is not a matter of creating new roads, rather of protecting current routes from erosion and making them easily passable for vehicles. The first step is to identify the most critical sections, usually rocky, steep or uneven stretches, stretches with soft of loose ground where vehicles lose traction (especially during the wet season) or areas where strong currents wash earth away and create deep ditches. These sections of the road are covered with carefully laid stones to create a firm base which is then cemented over. Where necessary, gabions are built. These gabions act as highly effective and environmentally sensitive retaining walls which permit the water to pass through without causing erosion. The manual labour is provided by the beneficiary communities while Nuevas Esperanzas provides materials, logistical support and project supervision.

To celebrate 14 years serving the Telica communities with your help, we want to raise £5,000 to improve eight stretches of severely damaged road on the way to Agua Fría, which helps people to travel faster and more safely.

#HelpTelicaThrive