From Alabama to Nicaragua, Carole Harper’s journey was fueled by a passion for justice and dignity. In 1989, she founded El Porvenir with a simple, powerful belief: no woman should carry water on her head, and no child should go without safe drinking water. Under her leadership, rural communities across Nicaragua built wells, latrines, and wash stations—projects rooted in partnership and respect. Today, her legacy lives on in clean water,
healthy forests, and thriving families.
OUR HISTORY
Since 1990, El Porvenir has worked side-by-side with rural families and schools in Nicaragua to construct wells, water systems, latrines, school hand-washing stations as well as support watershed restoration projects.
Carole Harper, a judge in California, founded El Porvenir in 1990 after working with Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua. She launched El Porvenir to address the lack of clean drinking water in rural communities and respond to the determination of local people to improve their living standards.
El Porvenir grew into an integrated program that includes water, sanitation, hygiene and maintenance education, and watershed restoration. When El Porvenir started offering service trips, Nicaragua was recovering from the aftermath of a civil war and didn’t have a tourism industry; it was difficult to find English-speaking guides, public transportation, or hotels outside of Managua. For North Americans to travel to Nicaragua and see El Porvenir’s rural development work firsthand, it was necessary for El Porvenir to serve as a tour organizer. Service trips bring small groups of North Americans into rural areas to experience village life and work alongside local families on projects.
What was once an organization with one employee, carrying out four projects a year, has become a leading international nonprofit with a mainly Nicaraguan staff partnering with thousands of Nicaraguans annually.