"Peaceful Nature wildlife reserve" Bringing Women in Action and La Paz farmers together
Peaceful Nature Wildlife Reserve is an 8-acre reserve located in La Paz, Carazo which contains shade grown coffee areas and forests, as well as an agroecological farm with biointensive raised bed gardens, contour basic grain farming, and small-scale animal raising. The reserve includes a coffee shop, a natural swimming pool, guest rooms, 3 nature trails and a children's playground. Produce such as fruits and vegetables, basic grains, cacao, coffee, moringa and honey are sold at the reserve. The reserve offers bird and wildlife tours, agroecology and organic farming workshops, and educational activities for children.
Peaceful Nature is also an important venture between Women in Action and La Paz farmers in order to provide sustainable income to families by processing and marketing natural produce from La Paz for sale by WIA members at community fairs and farmer's markets . Through a government program, we have registered Peaceful Nature as a small business which will have access for sales at the many fairs and markets that are organized around the country.
Over the years, we have carried out several activities that have brought WIA and La Paz farmers together, which have included shared workshops and educational trips, as well as selling the farmer's produce at the WIA store. In this same spirit, Peaceful Nature builds on these relationships. In this way, we are not only providing a higher profit to farmers and sustainable income to WIA members, we are further connecting our two projects and also contributing to the popular economy.
The program includes La Paz farmer's produce such as basic grains, fruit, vegetables, coffee, moringa, and cocoa, We are currently processing vegetables in order to make hot sauces, fruits to make traditional sweets, moringa to make leaf powder and seed oil, and cocoa to make chocolate candies, chocolate syrup and cocoa butter. We have recently designed a website for Naturaleza de La Paz [Peaceful Nature] where we can promote our different products online for sale in Nicaragua.
We are hoping to raise money to hire two part time employees from our WIA and La Paz programs. [$3,000 for each employee at $250/month],
We feel that this is one of our most important initiatives to provide sustainable income to our friends in Nicaragua!