La Bastilla Agricultural Technical School
Following the model of Teach A Man To Fish, an NGO that specialises in “education that pays for itself” in developing countries and project manages La Bastilla Educational Programme, La Bastilla Agricultural Technical School is the first rural entrepreneurship school in Nicaragua. Our students have the opportunity to study as boarders, entering in Fourth Year of secondary school and graduating at the end of Sixth Year.
Initial funds from the Jacobs Foundation, the Argidius Foundation, and the Agency for Development and Cooperation Central America Department helped to start the school and its business areas. The objective is that the income from these businesses will finance the education of the students and that by 2014 the school will be 100% self-sufficient. This educational model and the “learning-by-doing, learning-for-earning” methodology offers youngsters from low-income families from Jinotega and its surrounding municipalities relevant skills for the labour market, or to start up their own small businesses.
Business Areas
Despite our early stages of existence, the school has already managed to start up seven small businesses:
- Dairy Production: the area has a stable with a capacity for 14 cows and land of 2.63 hectares for grazing and planting pasture. There are currently cows and calves of two races – Swiss Breed and Holstein. At their peak, each cow produces over 10 litres of delicious milk daily, which is supplied to the ecolodge, the boarding school, the primary school, and sold to other clients. We plan to have a total of 25 cows in 2011 to be able to begin making other dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt.
- Egg Production: there are two coops, with internal dimensions of 10m x 20m (200 m2), each with a capacity to house 1000 hens. At present we have 460 chickens of the ISA Brown breed. Gradually, the quantity will be raised till we have 2,000 birds in production from 2012. Apart from selling our fresh eggs to hotels, restaurants and distributors, we offer them in the menus of the boarding school and ecolodge.
- Pig-rearing: we keep seven Yorkshire and Landrace female pigs, and one male Landrace. The school specialises in the sale of 28-day year old piglets, facilitated by two pregnancies annually by each female pig, which produces an average of 8 piglets per birth.
- Coffee and Reforestation Plants: the designated land is approximately 875 m2, on which some 20,000 plants, of both types, can be grown. Our key client is La Bastilla Coffee Estates. Beekeeping: starting with 20 hives of Africanised bees, kept on the outskirts of the coffee trees, the aim is to increase the number of hives to 40 in order to produce and bottle sweet honey, ready to be sold.
- Vegetable Garden: the available land is approximately 7001m2, on which we grow mainly tomatoes, beans, peppers, carrots, beetroot, radishes, celery, cabbage, lettuce, chayote and passion fruit. Most of the products are destined for the supply and consumption of the boarding school, to improve the diet of the students, and for the ecolodge. The rest is sold to the public.
- La Bastilla Ecolodge
