2008.05.25: May 25, 2008: Headlines: COS - Nicaragua: COS - Honduras: Sports: Service: NGOs: Adventure: Vacations: San Jose Mercury News: Honduras RPCV Nick Mucha founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Nicaragua: Peace Corps Nicaragua: Peace Corps Nicaragua: Newest Stories: 2008.05.25: May 25, 2008: Headlines: COS - Nicaragua: COS - Honduras: Sports: Service: NGOs: Adventure: Vacations: San Jose Mercury News: Honduras RPCV Nick Mucha founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-35-238.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.35.238) on Friday, May 30, 2008 - 2:25 pm: Edit Post

Honduras RPCV Nick Mucha founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations

Honduras RPCV Nick Mucha  founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations

"I think if I had just come there straight from Santa Cruz, I would have been in hog heaven," Mucha said. "But coming from a Peace Corps perspective in Honduras it was so clear that surfing was infiltrating this small town where the only exposure to the outside world is through surfing. "Americans like my friend Jack are coming in and setting up hotels, taking advantage of the resources these communities are offering. There wasn't a coordinated effort on the part of the surfers to make sure that the community was the primary benefactor." In 2005, Mucha and Monaghan founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations. For the past year and a half Project WOO has been working on its pilot project in Gigante. After their first visit, Mucha and Monaghan realized that the well-groomed tubes spinning just off Gigante Beach represented the town's most valuable resource, one that could prove to be a vital asset in pulling the community out of the depths of poverty.

Honduras RPCV Nick Mucha founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations

Leo Maxam, The Green Room: Wave of Optimism: Santa Cruz surfer works to help poor communities in Central America benefit from nearby good waves
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Article Launched: 05/25/2008 01:34:46 AM PDT

Nick Mucha was in the middle of a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America when he decided to use his vacation time to visit a friend's surf camp in Nicaragua.

After going for months without seeing the ocean while working in the mountains of Honduras, Mucha and his Peace Corps partner, Adam Monaghan — both hardcore surfers — weren't fazed by the arduous two-day journey by bus required to reach the small town of Pie de Gigante, along Nicaragua's southern Pacific coast.

While they were impressed with the often perfect and empty waves they found at their friend's newly established surf camp in Gigante, Mucha and Monaghan were more concerned about how the small town of about 400 was being affected by the rapid influx of foreign surfers in search of waves.

Even more disturbing was how the majority of people in the community — mostly poor fishermen — were seeing little, if anything, in return from the foreign surfers and surf camps that came to use the beaches and waves.

"I think if I had just come there straight from Santa Cruz, I would have been in hog heaven," Mucha said. "But coming from a Peace Corps perspective in Honduras it was so clear that surfing was infiltrating this small town where the only exposure to the outside world is through surfing.

"Americans like my friend Jack are coming in and setting up hotels, taking advantage of the resources
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these communities are offering. There wasn't a coordinated effort on the part of the surfers to make sure that the community was the primary benefactor."

In 2005, Mucha and Monaghan founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations. For the past year and a half Project WOO has been working on its pilot project in Gigante.

After their first visit, Mucha and Monaghan realized that the well-groomed tubes spinning just off Gigante Beach represented the town's most valuable resource, one that could prove to be a vital asset in pulling the community out of the depths of poverty.

The rapidly growing, million dollar surf travel industry could wind up being the savior of this formerly isolated village — or its downfall.

"We wanted to make sure that these small towns are really benefiting from the presence of surfing," Mucha said. "Our philosophy is that surfing's footsteps around the world be planting positive seeds of social change."

Mucha, 28, currently lives in Santa Cruz working full time for a separate nonprofit, but for the past two years his second "full-time" job has been his role as Executive Director of Project WOO. He works on a volunteer basis, receiving no pay.

"Project WOO is really where my heart is," he said. "We're on a very shoestring budget. Paying my salary is not a high priority right now."

Monaghan, meanwhile, facilitates Project WOO's on-the-ground operations in Gigante and is committed to staying in Nicaragua as long as necessary to ensure that the program becomes sustainable, Mucha said.

Drawing upon their community development experience in the Peace Corps, both knew that in order to create sustainable social change in Gigante it was up to the villagers themselves to decide what they wanted to do about the issue of surf tourism and how they wanted to accomplish their goals.

Instead of coming in as outsiders and telling the people what to do or just handing out what they deemed best, Project WOO asked the people what they wanted and helped them to address those needs themselves.

To that end, Project WOO worked with townspeople to conduct a "commmunity-wide needs assessment" study in which each citizen participated in workshops and town meetings to identify Gigante's greatest needs. This project included the first census ever taken in Gigante. At the end of the nine-month process, the town identified transportation and education as its biggest priorities.

Gigante has never been served by a public bus, making things that should be simple — such as going to school or going to the market to buy and sell goods in the nearest city — a time-consuming and exhausting affair. Since there is no secondary school in Gigante, high school age students who wish to continue their education are forced to travel as far as 30 miles just to get to school every day through a combination of walking, hitchhiking and waiting for buses that run outside of town.

WOO is working with the community to acquire and operate the first public bus company in Gigante by providing the town with a "micro loan" to purchase the bus and cover the startup costs for the first six months. Over a five-year period, the town will pay the organization back and assume full ownership of the transportation business.

"There is no charity involved," Mucha said.

Project WOO is also helping to pay the salaries for three new elementary school teachers at the town's primary school. Before the new hires, there was just one teacher responsible for some 80 kids.

WOO also facilitates other town projects, including providing educational materials for the primary school, constructing two latrines and a swingset for the school, digging a well and constructing a water system for potable water, and improving the dirt road that connects Gigante with the nearest town.

In the coming months, there are also plans to build a town library. An architect from the States, who frequently visits Gigante for surf trips, is donating his experience to help in the process.

Project WOO's innovative grassroots approach to helping poor coastal communities in Latin America benefit from the presence of good surf has also attracted the support of Reef, one of the most powerful players in the surf industry. The clothing giant recently launched a new project called Reef Redemption in an effort to get on board the "green" bandwagon and implement what its Web site describes as "environmentally conscious and socially responsible business practices."

Mike Gass, Director of the Reef Redemption program, said the company has been working with Project WOO and providing seed money to get operations off the ground for over a year now.

"The thing that most impresses us with the efforts of Project WOO is their commitment to empowering the local communities to take charge of their own destiny," Gass said. "The model of work that they employ truly engages the local community and puts the prioritization and ownership of the projects in the hands of locals rather than handing down what is deemed 'best for them.'

"It is a great extension of the concept of you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him to fish and he can feed his family for a lifetime."

Unlike certain environmental non-governmental organizations that might have come in and spoken for the town, condemning all development in an attempt to keep this little stretch of tropical coast "virgin," Project WOO has simply helped the people to organize their own assemblies and come to a democratic decision about how they want to confront the impending wave of surfers.

In Gigante, the community has decided that it wants to pursue responsible development. They want to welcome the surfers but to also make sure that the town as a whole benefits from the infusion of surf tourism dollars.

"Our biggest principle is organizing, mobilizing and empowering the people to accomplish what they want to do with surfing," Mucha said. "Do they not want surfers? Do they want to make it harder for gringos to purchase land? We want them to do with surfing as they please. But it seems that in Gigante the people want to benefit from it. For them it's a tremendous opportunity."

Project WOO is still fundraising for the bus project in Gigante. If you would like to learn more about the project and how you can help, please visit their Web site at www.projectwoo.org.

For more suring coverage by Leo Maxam, check out his blog at www.santacruzlive.com/blogs/surf.
Got a surf story? Contact Leo Maxam at leomaxam@yahoo.com.




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Headlines: May, 2008; Peace Corps Nicaragua; Directory of Nicaragua RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Nicaragua RPCVs; Peace Corps Honduras; Directory of Honduras RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Honduras RPCVs; Sports; Service; NGO's; Adventure





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Story Source: San Jose Mercury News

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