Hi! Really nice to meet you :) We are Marion and Jocelyn, we've met in Switzerland after a few month abroad for a volunteer work. Together, we imagined this project to help families in Nicaragua.

The pledge of EcoCasa Nicaragua ? Give some hope to families in need, by offering them ecological, economical and easy constructible home.

The first step of that beautiful adventure? A new home for the Fernandez family, in the community of Ocotal.

“First of all,

We would like to thank for the attention you pay for this project so special for us.

Summer 2014, Marion hits the road for a 2-month volunteer work in Ocotal, a pretty city located in the North of Nicaragua. For two months, Marion had the chance to work in the preschool centre Sol del Saber, sharing the everyday life of women and young children from the community. That’s where she met Carmen Hernandez and her family.

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Carmen, her husband and her two kids are facing intolerable living condition: they are living at the border of a river, under a waste disposal, without any electricity or water.

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This situation causes different problems to the Hernandez family: the impossibility for the children to work for school, health problems, but also a certain form of social exclusion. This situation, already unacceptable got worst as the Hernandez were expelled from their field.

September 2014, Marion comes back home, the head full of memories and with a project for the community that gave her so much. At the university, she meets Jocelyn, a civil engineer student, who also spent the summer abroad for a volunteer work. Together, they imagined the EcoCasa house: ecological, economical and easy constructible. The EcoCasa houses are thought to be built autonomously, with local material and without a lot of machines in an economical and practical aim, so the project could take place in any situation. Their structure made in solid wood and their platform on pilotis allows the house to withstand any kind of meteorological situation.

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EcoCasa houses are thought ecological in their conception (recuperation of rainwater, local and non polluting material, …) and in their future realisation (a reduction of the transport for the material, doesn’t need big machines, …).

The project will also carry an educative campaign about ecology, the need of recycling alternative ways to live. Its aim will be to increase awareness among the community and especially the children, trough activities in class and on the field.

As mentioned, this project will begin with the Hernandez family, but we would love for it to continue with other families in need in order to bring smiles and hope for such great human living.

EcoCasa Nicaragua: Ecological Wooden House Initiative

The publications