Project Ezra

From 1986 to 2024, we founded, funded and adminstered a primary and secondary school project along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border in a remote corner of Central America wehre an indigenous people called the Miskitos live.

 

“Project Ezra” (taken from a famous Biblical educator-Ezra 7:10) was initiated in 1986 during a time of war in Nicaragua as a response to a desperate refugee situation. 

A war that erupted in 1980 along the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua between the Sandinista government with their Cuban, Russian, and Bulgarian "advisors" against the local indigenous population of Miskitos, Suma, Rama, and Creoles along the Coco River and Caribbean coast that resulted in over 60,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Honduras. These refugees settled along the Kruta River, and the Honduran side of the Coco River, which is one of the most remote corners of the Western Hemisphere, accessible only by air, boat, and foot.

 

Michael with Truman Cunninghan and Dan Cergioni in December 1984 on the Kruta RIver

 

Michael with his friend Jimmy.

 

 By 1986, most of these refugee children had been without education for five or more years. It was then that Augusto Vicente, a refugee teacher, asked us for help in starting a school for the refugee kids in Sawa.

Augusto. Michael and Truman visiting the students in Sih, Honduras, in the school building pictured below.

Dr Ballard Smith with nurse Nancy Bundy, along with Michael and Ron Bross.

 

 

We supplied them with notebooks and pencils, and together with Sofia Borst, Augusto began teaching classes in Sawa. 

That year, Sharon and Earl Washburn arrived in a Honduran village name Auka near the Nicaraguan border where Truman Cunningham, Michael Bagby, and others had set up a relief distribution center to help Miskito Indian refugees from the Sandinista war in Nicaragua.

 

Debbie Cash, Elia Mejia and Sharon Washburn, Auka teachers conference 1988

They spent a month training four adults and established schools in four villages. Michael traveled to Tegucigalpa to find school books.  There he met Victoria Palacios, a professor of education at the National University, who volunteered to help train the “Project Ezra” teachers. 

She also provided us with her own "Colleccion Catrachitos"primary school curricullum that we used on our schools for many years.

With Victoria’s curriculum and training help, along with invaluable assistance from Earl & Sharon, Ron Bross, John Freyer, Debbie Cash, Elia Mejia, and others, Project Ezra expanded over the next year to include 12 villages and employ 24 Miskito Indian teachers. 

Damacio used a blackboard, and Victoria Palacios textbooks to teach the first and second grade. 

 

A few years after this photo, Damacio was bathing in the river when he was bitten by a fer-de-lance snake, which is one of the most deadly venomous creatures in existence. Damacio’s wife took his place teaching, and continued to teach! In 1990, the war ended in Nicaragua, and Humberto Belli, the new Minister of Education, invited Project Ezra o to become part of the Nicaraguan public school system. We accepted, and we literally dismantled our school builldings and rebuilt them on the Nicaraguan side of the Rio Coco.

Seek The Lamb had official charge of education in nine communities along the lower Rio Coco. 

 

Our school project employed over 50 teachers and administrators, teaching grades K thru 12, in one of the most remote corners of the Western Hemisphere. Yet our students have achieved academic levels equal to or better than most of the students in Nicaragua! This was because of our constant supervision, teacher training, and most of all the spiritual emphasis of our curriculum.

 

Pablo teaching in Sawa. 1989

We began each day teaching the Bible in the native language, Miskito.

 

Sofia Borst teaching in Sawa

 

In addition, our teachers have a personal interest in this project as over most of our teachers began their education as first graders in Project Ezra schools in the 80’s and 90’s! Eventually Project Ezra had an enrollment of over 1600 students, grades Kinder thru 12th. 

This was all possible through many prayers, and financial support to Seek The Lamb through donations, sponsorship of children and teachers, and profits from Rio Coco Bean coffee sales.

Photo: Truman, Michael, Onofre & Augusto in Jerusalem, 1997

In 1997, we took our three leaders of the school project to Israel for a Biblical study tour.Our Project Ezra leadership team was well educated, tri-lingual, and well traveled.

Our Study Tour delagation at Ein Gedi, Dead Sea Israel, 1997. Kathy Englert, Dr Randy Smith, Augusto, Michael, Laura, Craig Englert, Onofre and Truman.

Throughout the 2000's our project graduated many Miskito youths, many of whom went on the universities in Nicaragua and became engineers, doctors, nurses, and business administrators, along with the many primary school teachers that we employed over our 37 year history.

One example is the child below, in 2007.

Absalom Florencio with his brother one morning in Sawa.

 

Absalom's father was one of our teachers in Sawa, He completed primary school and secondary school, and enrolled in the university in Puerto Cabezas, the largest Miskito city on the Caribbean, about a rough four hour drive from Waspam on the Coco River.

In 2019, Absalom graduated with a degree in computer engineering.

He is one of many children in the most remote corner of Central America who had the opportunity for education thanks to the prayers and financial support of so many during the years 1985-2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael with our former students who bevame our teachers.

 

Laura always amazes our students when she speaks to them in the Miskito language!