One of our core principles of Waves of Hope is to create sustainable jobs and income generation initiatives for members of our community. To date, we have trained women in our community in esthetics and massage therapist programs and our women’s jewelry club was a great success. Our resort, El Coco Loco, has also been a big part of this goal as we now have 15 full time staff members receiving a stable salary, all but two of whom are from our community. We are proud of these success stories and we are now ready to add one more to this list, the Waves of Hope Community Bakery. This is by far our most ambitious project to date, in terms of the resources and support needed to launch this project.
The concept is simple. We’re going to bake bread and sell it. The tricky part is the implementation. Our first step was market research and this has been mostly completed. We have determined that we have two target markets-local Nicaraguans and the tourism industry (hotels and house renters). The tourism industry has a lot of potential and this excites us due to the variety products we’re hoping to bake (flavoured breads, bagels, pies, whole wheat goodies, etc.) — and yes coco loco will be a large client. The next step is seeking out funding and then the construction of our bakery. From there we need to build the ovens and stock the bakery and away we go. We’re hoping to implement this over the next 6-8 months but we’ll need your help to make our latest dream a reality. To donate, please click here:
We will need approximately $10,000 from start to finish and this project should create 5-7 full time jobs. The initial investment will be considered a loan to be paid back over time. Coco Loco will be providing some of the construction labour and expertise, training and leadership, but this will be a locally run project, led by our ambassadors Carlos and Katja.
We are also seeking out a sister bakery from back home in Canada or the US. We’re looking for a small bakery that can provide fundraising assistance plus recipes, expertise and mentoring. Spanish is an asset but its not required in this case. Coco Loco would be happy to host the bakers for two weeks free of charge in exchange for this help. Please donate and help us spread the word!!
Gracias!