About Circulo de Amigas

 

Círculo de Amigas is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit and tax-exempt organization that provides charitable, educational and medical help to poor Spanish speaking communities in Central and North America. Projects have focused on Orange County, California, and especially Jinotega, Nicaragua.

 

Círculo's mission is to alleviate poverty in Nicaragua by helping women acquire skills and tools needed to improve their lives; enabling children to go to school; providing access to community health services; and giving direct aid to victims of severe family hardship or regional crisis.

 

A Brief History of Circulo de Amigas

 

Patricia "Pat" McCully, the founder of Círculo de Amigas (Circle of Friends), taught Spanish in California (U.S.) for 20 years. In 1983 she visited Nicaragua for the first time, returning again in 1984 and 1985. It was during these last trips that Pat traveled to the more remote areas of the country where she spoke with the poor and observed how they lived. Standing in the ruins of a burned-down, one-room schoolhouse, she felt compelled to do something to help with the extreme poverty she witnessed.

 

A lot of the women Pat saw had nothing but rags to wear. She decided she would teach them how to sew clothes for themselves and their children.

 

In 1993, after many trips to Central America, Pat purchased a house on the edge of Jinotega, a small, mountain community about 4 hours north of the Nicaraguan capitol of Managua. The parlor of that house now has electricity and is a classroom where local women are taught to sew using donated machines and supplies.

 

But Círculo has also built and staffed a health clinic and adopted a preschool. It is helping to save eyes and lungs (and rain forest) from harsh wood cooking, and is providing computers to public schools that formerly had not even typewriters. Through Amigos del Estudio, Círculo has found sponsors for dozens of students who would not have otherwise gone to school. It has also provided a much needed library for its barrio's residents, who have no books in their homes or in the little school up the road.

 

In 2005, in order to ensure its future, Pat found a new home for Círculo with Centro de Estudios y Promoción Social (CEPS), a Nicaraguan social service agency whose goals are a good match with those of Círculo. Like Círculo, CEPS works to promote increased self reliance among local community members.