Meet Carlos Avendaño

In Nicaragua, we are unlocking the potential of innovators like Carlos by delivering solutions inagriculture. Through your support, farmers are seeing their own efforts rewarded through increased crop yields and by bringing food security and prosperity to families. Together we are changing the lives of people every day.

Carlos ‘Charlie’ Avendaño is an innovator and a visionary. Twenty-five years ago, Charlie knew he could increase his yields and create a better life for his family through the use of irrigation. However, his attempts to build his own drip irrigation system were neither effective nor sustainable.

Despite his vision of a secure, reliable system to water his crops, Charlie was faced with challenges that his own home-made innovations could not overcome. The technology he required was not available to him and his family.

In 2014, a neighbour invited Charlie to an event put on by iDEal – the irrigation company iDE started with donor seed money to provide drip irrigation services to small- and medium-sized farmers in Nicaragua.

iDEal installed the system and provided some basic training for Charlie. “The results,” Charlie says, “speak for themselves.” Five years later, that original system is still going strong and his fields are producing like never before.

The impact of Charlie’s vision-become-reality is seen every day because your support made iDEal drip possible. In Nicaragua, you are bringing custom-made solutions to farmers like Charlie who lacked access to technology necessary to bring their ideas to life. Through your support, small- and medium-sized farms like Charlie’s are gaining access to drip irrigation, a major contributor to effective, reliable and sustainable farm practices. Through your support, Charlie and his family face a brighter future.

The last word goes to Charlie. “I couldn’t do this work without drip irrigation,” says Charlie with a smile. “My neighbours are now also using the system I dreamed of so many years ago.”