Students with their graduation bonus check. Photo: afgj.
By Becca Renk – Dec 1, 2022
The day I crossed the gymnasium stage in to receive my high school diploma, I was surrounded by the ghosts of my childhood friends who didn’t graduate with me. My public school in North Idaho was big – there were nearly 300 of us graduating – but a lot of my friends had dropped out. Many were already parents, others were working full time jobs, some had quit school after repeated run-ins with the principal and police. In some cases, they didn’t have the support of their families, but in all cases they didn’t have the support of the American public school system.
Today I am proud to know that my daughters and their generation of Nicaraguan young people have the full support of the public school system and the Nicaraguan government.
This week our 17-year-old daughter Eibhlín was one of two graduating honor roll students to speak at the Graduation Bonus ceremony at her high school, where the Ministry of Education gave each student a check for C$1,000 córdobas, nearly US $30. For more than a decade, the Sandinista government has distributed this special bonus to high school graduates. The checks are made out to the students – they must have their identification card (issued at 16 in Nicaragua) to sign for the check. It is a day of “adulting” – for many, this is the first time they will sign a document that has to match the signature on their ID card. For most, it is the first time they will cash a check in their own name.
“Everyone, please practice your signatures!” calls out the Ministry of Education official who is overseeing the process at Eibhlin’s school. “You have to sign inside the box, so please sign carefully.” All the adults are kind, helping the kids practice, explaining the process to them.
“There’s no rush, take a deep breath and don’t be nervous.”
“If you have trouble endorsing the check at the bank, please come into the office, and we will issue you another check.”
Listening to everyone chiming in, crowding around to take photos, hugging…I get a clear picture of Nicaragua collectively supporting its youth and lovingly lifting them up.
The Graduation Bonus may sound like a small program, but it is decidedly not: this year some 63,000 young people are graduating from secondary school. Just the logistics of issuing and delivering that many checks to all corners of the country boggles the mind – but this Bonus also represents an investment in Nicaragua’s youth of US$1.75 million, and it’s just one program of the plethora that have been supporting youth since the Sandinista party came back into power in 2007. In fact, these programs have been so effective that there is now a noticeable lack of gang activity and delinquency in the streets.
The difference in Ciudad Sandino and Managua’s urban barrios now from just five years ago is noticeable enough that it has become a regular topic of conversation among Nicaraguans living in neighborhoods that used to see frequent gang fights. According to the United Nations, Nicaragua is the safest country in Central America and has not had problems with international gangs and drug cartels like its neighboring countries. Even prior to 2007, Nicaragua’s gangs were small neighborhood gangs and it was common for gang members to “age out;” if they weren’t killed or imprisoned, eventually they would leave the gang to settle down and have families. The difference now seems to be that there is no longer a new generation of neighborhood delinquents to take the place of the aging gang members; as a result, the gangs themselves are fizzling out of existence. In the barrios, the consensus is that this change is due to the Sandinista government’s programs directed at youth for the past 15 years:
-Free public education starting in preschool
-Free lunch for 1.2 million school children daily
-Secondary schools on Saturday, allowing rural and non-traditional students to attend classes only one day a week and graduate in the same amount of time as students who attend school every weekday
-Accelerated weekend high school programs for non-traditional students who dropped out of regular classes
-Thousands of free vocational training programs available around the country
-Free university – the percentage of Nicaraguans with university degrees has risen from 9% to 19% in just 15 years
-Public parks – 772 parks built since 2006
-Internet access – 207 free Wifi zones in parks plus fiber optic cable installed everywhere there is electrical grid access (now 99% of the country)
-1,340 sports facilities built
-153 cultural centers with free art, dance, music and sports classes in every municipality
-Community policing prevention and intervention programs for at-risk youth including family counseling, addiction counseling, violence prevention, high school classes, sports and business training which includes police direct investment in businesses started by youth
-Free family planning through Nicaragua’s universal free health care system
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Simply put, there are so many opportunities afforded to youth now that being in a gang is neither necessary nor an attractive option for Nicaragua’s young men.
Similarly, early motherhood is no longer the best option for most Nicaraguan girls, as it was for generations. Until recently, Nicaragua had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the region. Now most Nicaraguan women are having their first child at 27 years old, and Nicaragua ranks number one in the world for educational attainment for women and girls. Those young women who do get pregnant now have many options for continuing their education while also raising their child.
Young people in Nicaragua still face plenty of challenges – just like in my high school, not all of Eibhlín’s friends have the support of their families – some live on their own and have to work, some have parents with addiction problems or care for family members with serious illness. For these students, the range of options open to them helps make it possible to continue studying despite difficulties, and the Graduation Bonus helps encourage them to get their diploma. Some students will use the money to help with their graduation costs – at Eibhlin’s school they are renting gowns, sharing the cost of decorating the auditorium and buying cake and soda to celebrate. Some students will use the money to pay for transportation, copies, and extra classes to help pass university entrance exams and get accepted into university.
When Eibhlín and her classmates walk across the stage to receive their diplomas next week, they won’t be surrounded by the ghosts of dropped out classmates like I was. It is gratifying for me to know that whichever path they choose to take, they will be supported not just by their loved ones, but also by their country’s institutions and public policies.
Becca Renk is originally from the U.S. but has lived and worked in Nicaragua since 2001 with the Jubilee House Community and its project the Center for Development in Central America. She and her husband Paul have two daughters who have studied in Nicaraguan public schools for 15 years.
