Romana

Since 2010, the Vega Baja Social Center has been providing assistance in the town of Diriamba in western Nicaragua. This initiative organized by women of Opus Dei offers programs of human and professional formation to needy girls and women from the surrounding rural area and neighboring towns and villages. The objective is to offer the students the necessary skills to improve their quality of life and that of their families, through their insertion in the working world and through the practice of human and Christian virtues in their homes.

Some 200 women are trained each year in cooking, needle work, management of micro-businesses, crafts, bee-keeping, use of computers and English. Rosibel Alemán, 67 years-old, a student of the micro-business course, says: “I thought that at my age I couldn’t study, but thanks to these courses I realized that I can and I discovered that I had abilities I never imagined.” Eleana Ramos, a twelve-year-old who participates in the school supplementation program, says: “I love to come to the center, although I have to walk several kilometers from my house. I’m learning new things and feel urged to be better, and I make new friends.” “For me,” says Yelsika Bonilla, an 18 year-old student in the cooking program, “this was my great opportunity, because here they’re teaching me a profession and, above all, to value myself as a person and to develop myself.”