Doug and Julie Effinger in Nicaragua

In our ministry, Nica Impact, we are much more than just a program for assisting young adults in their careers. We have expanded our focus to include other educational avenues. One way we do this is through a partnership with the William Minor Foundation. In this partnership have built a local library that we manage where we have books and computer access available to local students to support their studies. All the funding for the library comes from the foundation while Nica Impact manages it. It has proven to be an amazing resource to local young people, especially those from the poorer segments of society. We also have developed a relationship with the US Embassy where they provide daily English classes for teenagers sponsored by the Embassy program called Access English. This program provides scholarships to poorer students so that they can participate in a two year intensive English course. It is an amazing program and we are honored to host one of the classes in our library.

Casa Juan Marcos was our attempt to help students aging out from orphanages. We began with 3 young men from orpha #2 and one young man from orpha #1. We provided a rented home, a cook, a staff member as house leader, and food and educational expenses. It seemed to us to be a good program, but what we found was that the young adults from the orphanages did not like the discipline we were expecting from them. We required that they get good grades, communicate with the house leader, go to school daily, and do their chores and such. The four boys that we had lasted just over a year before one by one, they decided they would prefer to not be under our expectations for success that we had. A year after we opened the boys home, we opened one for girls. We rented a house, hired staff, and outfitted the home for four girls from the first two orphanages. When it was time for them to come, three decided not to participate, and the fourth came for two days, filled two backpacks with items from t

When we arrived at the orphanage for our permanent mission, the first thing we noticed was our house. It was not finished. It was supposed to be finished but it was not. It was missing a lot of things. Doors, windows, a floor, and a ceiling. Over the next 6 months Julie and I completed the house that should have been completed before our arrival. We were disappointed but at the same time we were happy to be near the children. We moved into a small office space as a temporary sleeping quarters until I could get the house far enough along to move in. We also helped to facilitate some mission teams that came because of our permanent roles there. It didn’t take long before we began to realize that although the children loved having us there, many of the staff were suspicious of us. We started to feel tension. Maybe it was cultural, but over a very short period we found ourselves on the outside of staff meetings and ministry discussions. We were never sure why, but noticed that there were