furthermore, people live in scarcity and have a survivalist mentality to simply get through the day. Historically, an apprenticeship model existed between a father and son and between a mother and daughter. However, over time this model of learning has vanished and left a vacuum, resulting in a lack of creative and critical thinking. This loss has had a major impact on life and how people survive in these communities. As an organization, ESVO recognized that they needed to somehow inject vocational training and the idea of apprenticeship back into the community. Boone stated, “It’s not happening in the formal public educational system and it’s not happening at home” (D. Boone, personal communication, February 1, 2017).

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    ESVO first started in a little community outside of Managua and was affiliated with a local school. Mike Diebert, a talented artist and metalworker who taught at a local international school, was very interested in vocational education. Deibert quit his teaching job, joined in the shared vision of the Nehemiah Center, and began to work with some young men by developing and thinking through the strategies of how to add vocational and apprenticeship-style training into their daily lives. Organizational leaders, pastors, and one key leader, Erik Loftsgard, president of Missionary Ventures and macro-visionary behind the project, came alongside and began collaborating about how to apply technical vocational education as we know it in the developed world and then apply that knowledge to the developing world. Dave Boone joined the organization ten years ago and has been involved in the development of this program from the first years in the small community to their current facility in Nejapa, where he continues to work with Nicaraguan teachers and local community leaders.

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Cultural Connections

    Boone explained, “we are closely connected to the culture in our communities in the sense that we designed this whole program asking ourselves how this will work and what will this look like inside of Nicaraguan culture. We recognized that the culture here is different from the developed world and that it was going to have to take its own track.” (D. Boone, personal communication, February 1, 2017). ESVO has always worked with Nicaraguan staff and teachers, and all of their apprentices and students are Nicaraguan. ESVO offers welding, carpentry, metal fabrication, blacksmithing, culinary arts, industrial sewing, auto mechanics, and some softer classes that are not tied to industry such as art and music. The vast majority of Nicaraguans are poor, and because of the generational poverty that has existed for many years, most Nicaraguans have had little access to knowledge and understanding outside their own communities. This has greatly affected their ability to experience new ideas or even consider that there are other ways of doing things. ESVO has been successful in bringing in outside influence and outside ideas. Boone stated, “It has been an incredible thing to watch. Outside influences have manifested themselves and the market and economy has grown. When we started we really didn’t have an end-game for our apprentices because there was not much of a job market. That’s a completely different story today as there are all kinds of job opportunities.”

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Notable Moments and Challenges

    ESVO has experienced three different phases in their ministry thus far. For the first five years, the program operated directly inside and with a local community. Program leaders quickly began working with a group of fifty to sixty young men in that community who learned metalworking, welding, and woodworking. This particular community survived off of a nearby commercial hog slaughtering operation, and as a result of the vocational training that the young men at ESVO received, many of them were able to get hired for good jobs there, most of them in maintenance.

Some of the challenges that ESVO faced was that some of the students became dependent on the program. These students desired to remain in the program, continue as apprentices, and rely on the pay from jobs that were generated through the program. They also became very jealous of anyone else coming in from the community to receive training. ESVO quickly realized a need to move to a neutral location, and this brought them to their present location in Nejapa where they now partner with a private kindergarten thru twelfth grade Nicaraguan school. Through this new partnership, every high school student is required to take vocational training. Currently this vocational program is the only one that fills the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education requirements to test a student’s formal classroom education in math and science. This resonates with Boone who states, “if they can’t practically apply formal education, what have they learned?” (D. Boone, personal communication, February 1, 2017).

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    There have been discouraging moments. The parents from the new partner school in Nejapa, who represent both low and middle income and middle-class professionals, including lawyers, doctors, and office workers whose family incomes ranged from $400 a month to $1000 per month, were at first resistant to the work of ESVO. They didn’t want their kids working with their hands. The parents felt that these job skills are associated with the lower-class, and they wanted their kids to rise to the upper-class. However, as of last year, parents now view the vocational program as one of the top three programs offered at the school. Boone said “it’s not just a reflection on the job we have done but a reflection on the changing economy, and this program has had a positive effect. People now understand and recognize that working with your hands, being a plumber, builder, electrician, carpenter, can mean so much more than what it has in the past” (D. Boone, personal communication, February 1, 2017).

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    One of the biggest challenges ESVO faces is not physically teaching someone how to weld or sand and cut wood, but rather how to counter and understand the mentality of someone who has grown up in extreme poverty. Growing up with scarcity and never understanding how to handle abundance is at the heart of this mentality. Boone shared a story that reflects the common thinking which exists in students who come from poor communities, recalling that “we have a coffee pot at ESVO, and the coffee is free for everyone and always available. We had a student who was very suspicious of the coffee pot. He asked, ‘Is the coffee really free?’ We can just get coffee anytime we want?’ I explained to him that yes, the coffee is free and always available. The first day he drank one cup of coffee, and the next day he drank 30 cups of coffee. Every day he would drink a lot of coffee along with all of the creamer in the refrigerator which he mistook for milk. This was an interesting display of scarcity and an inability to manage any access in his life.” (D. Boone, personal communication, February 1, 2017). His experience, along with the experiences faced by many of the young people when they come into the program begs the question that if they can’t manage and interact in a healthy way to an abundance of coffee, then how will they manage an abundance of money, time and resources.

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The Future

    ESVO is growing. Last year they taught 185 high school students; this year they will teach 230. Their passion is to impart something different to the students, create a spark in them to think differently, and for the student to practically apply what they learned in the classroom. By making more connections with commercial businesses in the area, they are discovering the job opportunities available for their students to find employment. Boone recalls that ten years ago many of the organizations in the area that were involved in church planting were confused about what ESVO does, but now these same organizations come to them asking advice, recognizing that their churches need to develop and grow, and that their church members need better job skills that allow them to acquire better jobs.

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Author Note:

Special thanks to Dave Boone, Executive Director of ESVO for the interview and permission

to take photos of Escuela Vocacional.

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References:

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ESVO (2017). About Us. Retrieved from http:// http://esvoministries.com/about/