When Kristin Van Busum went to Nicaragua, she met a twelve-year-old girl named Ana working at a coffee farm. Ana, who attended school for only two years, would follow Van Busum around and inquire about her life, and Van Busum would tutor Ana for two months and they would color and jump rope.
“She had all of these endearing qualities that a child should have—like energy, enthusiasm, idealism, persistence, resilience, and curiosity—and none of that would ever matter because she just was sort of put in this domestic role,” Van Busum said. “They didn't have anyone advocating for them. They didn't have the system set up.”
Her time with Ana inspired Van Busum to create her startup Project Alianza in 2015. The Boston-based nonprofit organization is dedicated to ensuring that children at risk for child labor in rural coffee villages have access to a safe, high-quality education.
Project Alianza runs educational projects for children in Nicaragua and plans on expanding to more countries in Central America. The 2018 MassChallenge winner has educated over 2,000 children from the age of 3 to 16 and will have built 10 schools by the end of 2019.
Van Busum’s mission is about empowering little girls and women. With her startup, she does this in twofolds: Project Alianza teaches the older women to be educators and leaders in the community, and then these women are able to teach children. Van Busum believes that giving women education and power transforms an entire community.
The organization goes to these rural areas and talks to the community leaders who recommend women that could be teachers in the community but haven't been given the chance.
“There are so many people that are looking for employment—there's untapped potential. There are women that might have graduated secondary school, but got pregnant and have no professional opportunities available to them,” Van Busum said. “We hire them, and they become teachers, and they get a scholarship for education—in one case, we had one of our first teachers get two bachelor's degrees with us.”
These women are paid livable wages—They earn more than their husbands or what they would as coffee pickers. The woman-founded startup employs over 40 people, 95 percent of which are women.
Van Busum said Project Alianza creates a sustainable culture where the people hired are Nicaraguan women and they invest in women to create change within their communities.
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Project Alianza is focused on educating people on the coffee farms because these regions are remote and isolated, thus it is more difficult to get to school from these areas, Van Busum explains. In addition, the parents want to keep the children for help on the coffee farms, but the prime season for coffee farming is in the months when school is on a break --- making Project Alianza's education more accessible.
The nonprofit follows the government’s public school curriculum, but it adds on to the curriculum to include topics like gender, consensual sex and sexual assault education, environmental care, hygiene to prevent worms and parasites, and how to keep the body healthy amongst other essential life skills.
The nonprofit is launching a campaign called, “We Rise up By Lifting Others” for International Women’s Day.
Amy VanHaren, founder of pumpspotting, is part of this campaign. Her Boston-based company is a support community for breastfeeding mothers through a mobile app and in person, and she will be spreading the message of how vital it is for women to support other women.
"There are different biases and barriers in different contexts, and it is so important to support women where we work, but it is equally important to support women that are trailblazing in progressive cities like Boston because they face a lot of barriers as well and we need to talk about them and raise awareness," Van Busum said.
