Shropshire Christian Aid is helping Nicaragua's poor

It's Christian Aid Week, and thousands of the charity's collection envelopes are being pushed through letterboxes all over Shropshire. Andrew Owen went to Nicaragua to see how the money is being spent.

There's not a lot of argument in the village of El Bocon when it comes to climate change.

This is a tiny community of 385 people at the foot of a hillside, six kilometres from the main road and reached by travelling along a dusty, bumpy dirt track.

Although the surrounding countryside is green and rather beautiful, El Bocon is poor, like the majority of villages in this, the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.

However, thanks to Christian Aid and its partner organisation, the Movimento Comunal Matagalpa (known as MCM), some of its 84 homes, though very humble, are at least made of brick instead of bits of wood.

There's a reason for this, and it's not just that people deserve proper living conditions. Brick will not wash away in storms. So these homes double as refuges.

The rainy season begins in May and ends in November - although that seems to be changing. We're here in late February and there are clouds in the sky. There's the occasional drop of rain, too. Even a few years ago this would not be happening, we're told.

Nicaragua is no stranger to changing climate patterns. According to Christian Aid it's one of the three countries in the world worst affected by weather catastrophes.

In 1988 Hurricane Mitch swept through, killing thousands of people and leaving 20 per cent of the population homeless.

Heavy rains have seen El Bocon evacuated three times in the past ten years. And, if the United Nations' forecasts are correct, the situation will only get worse. And this is why it is now part of a disaster risk reduction project managed by MCM with Christian Aid help.

To help protect homes and land, the villagers built a series of terraces - a bit like a huge staircase - at the foot of one of the hills.

The work took 10 families 18 days to complete and it had to be done when it wasn't raining, during the hot dry season.

But, when the storms hit, the terraces will help to retain water, stop the soil on which the crops depend from being washed away and reduce the danger of landslides.

The terraces are also used for growing food. For years people here have grown beans and corn, but MCM is encouraging them to look at other foods. Certain plants grow well in these conditions and also help to hold the soil together. That means people will still have an income should their main crops, like rice or beans, be lost to the weather.

So people are being encouraged to diversify and grow squashes and a strange looking plant called pitahaya, or dragon fruit.

Pitahaya is a valuable plant for El Bocon. Just ask Lidia Martinez, who lives in the village with her extended family. With MCM's help she has been growing pithaya for three years and it has become an important source of income.

It has enabled her to take out a low interest loan through MCM, money which she used to buy a cow - something she probably couldn't have done in a country where bank loans (assuming she could get one) can charge up to 60 per cent interest.

The cow produces three litres of milk a day - very useful when you have a family and small grandchildren. Lidia also makes her own cheese and says she would like to buy more cows so she could sell the milk to other villagers.

Back home in Britain Christian Aid Week is collecting money to make sure other families in Nicaragua will benefit in the same way that the Martinez family have.

In Shropshire a small army of volunteers is spending the week going from door to door delivering envelopes for donations of loose change.

In Shrewsbury there are about 290 collectors representing 16 churches; in Whitchurch there are 94 collectors for five churches; in Newport there are 130 volunteers. There are many more collectors around the county.

Christine Supple is the chairman of the Newport and Edgmond Christian Aid group, which raised more than £7,000 during last year's week of collecting. She says this week is important because "it's a chance to help".

"Christian Aid helps all faiths and none, and it's not an evangelical group," she adds.

"It's worth supporting because it helps the poorest of the poor to help themselves. It's a helping hand."