Holly Beck

Imagine you’re a 12 year old kid growing up in a remote fishing village in Northern Nicaragua. You’ve spent most of your life barefoot, chasing chickens and skinny dogs through barbed-wire fences. You learned to ride a horse at age 5 and by age 7 your dad had you herding cattle between pen and pasture. Your parents keep you busy with the chores of survival. There’s a two room school house just down the street but not much incentive to attend so you don’t know how to read.

Then one day, some gringos show up and buy land nearby. They give your uncles jobs in construction building a small eco-resort called El Coco Loco. Your mom gets hired to help out in the kitchen and your older brother scores a job as a night watchman.

Coco Loco founds a community development focused non-profit called Waves of Hope to improve the lives of the community they’ve fallen in love with. Volunteers come down from the US and Canada, girls with big smiles that spend mornings in the little school helping the one teacher that is assigned to teach three grades at once. In the afternoons they organize soccer games on the Coco Loco field, do art projects, and teach English. On Saturdays any kid that has attended classes Monday – Friday gets to borrow a surfboard and feel the joy of riding a wave.

Suddenly, there’s a lot of incentive to go to school. Attendance skyrockets. The tiny two room school house is no longer big enough.

Then Waves Of Hope announces that it will build a new school room for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. But we need your help!

The new classroom will cost $9,000 to build. You can help by donating to Waves of Hope. Every little bit helps.
Email hollybeck27@gmail.com or jamie@elcocolocoresort.com for more info on how you can make a difference and help kids go to school!