Right now more people live in poverty than don’t. Nearly 3 billion live on less than $2.00 per day. Millons of those people live in Nicaragua.
Portions of Nicaragua face malnutrition rates in excess of 50%. Rainbow Network has cut the malnutrition rate to 8% in the communities in which we work.
A third of the population still lacks access to safe water. Rainbow Network works through water chlorination, drilling wells, and building water filters to bring safe water home to tens of thousands of people.
24% of children are not in the school system. This mainly affects rural children. Rainbow Network is providing cottage primary education for thousands of young children and scholarships for high school students as well.
40% of Nicaraguans have no access to health care. The vast majority of the remaining 60% have limited access to low-quality health services. Rainbow Network’s staff medical doctors travel between rural communities bringing knowledge and medications. When a special need arises, arrangements are made to transport patients to a hospital that would be out of reach without assistance.
Poverty can seem too overwhelming or too big a problem to deal with and so we just shut down and do little or nothing. But poverty is not a thing, it is a simple lack of things – things which together we can provide, build, and teach. We can change this situation and end extreme poverty if we have the will to do so.
