This is the story of Virginia Castellón, who harnessed the power of a biodigester to build a more sustainable and financially independent life in northern Nicaragua.
A rocky road
Meet Virginia, a strong, warm-hearted woman of 66, who is a member of the Fundación Entre Mujeres (FEM). The organisation has been promoting women's rights, gender equality, and environmental sustainability for over 30 years.
Virginia lives in La Fraternidad in Nicaragua, a village marked by poverty. Life here is challenging, with no healthcare facilities or cell phone signal, poor road access and faraway food markets.
The burden of cooking
Traditionally a ‘woman’s task’, the daily struggle of collecting firewood for cooking, posed a particular challenge in La Fraternidad. Making fire in this way is physically taxing and time-consuming, especially during the humid rainy season, adding stress to essential daily tasks and limiting the time available for women to pursue other activities.
Burning wood releases toxic fumes, smoke, and fine particles, causing severe respiratory illnesses, especially affecting women who spent more time near the fires.
A space for innovative women
To respond to these challenges in villages like La Fraternidad, FEM started a promising new project, supported by horizont3000, the EU, kfb, and the Austrian Development Agency. It is called ‘Innovative Women and Green Economy’.
The aim is for women like Virginia to learn how to produce their own energy and food in a sustainable and efficient way - for example by using renewable energy sources in homes and growing their own vegetables.
Everyone is respected
"The women from FEM have become important people for me - real friends. They mean a lot to me. There is a warmth at FEM that you can hardly describe. Everyone is equal, everyone is respected. Even the men who sometimes attend the meetings treat us with a lot of respect, they treat us well".
– Virginia, Fundación Entre Mujeres
Turning waste into energy
A key tool Virginia learnt about during the project was the biodigester. This system operates by anaerobic digestion: waste from pigs and cows is fed into a sealed polyethylene tube.
In the absence of oxygen, microorganisms break down waste, producing methane gas, which is piped directly to her kitchen for cooking. The remaining slurry, rich in nutrients, serves as an effective organic fertiliser. With the support of colleagues from FEM, Virginia finally managed to have her own biodigester.
Instructions for building your own low-cost biodigester:
Ecological, healthy, and time-saving
"In the rainy season, it was difficult to make a fire because of the humidity. Today, I get up in the morning and simply cook breakfast with gas. That was a big change for my family"
– Virginia, Fundación Entre Mujeres
Gaining time, gaining hope
The biodigester's impact on Virginia's life has been profound. She now needs two-thirds less firewood, drastically reducing the hard work and time spent collecting it. Cooking is much easier and faster too. This saved time has allowed Virginia to attend more FEM training, gaining literacy and learning about her women's rights.
She also could improve her garden, applying composting techniques learned from FEM, which yields better harvests and, crucially, more income - dependency on a man as ‘breadwinner’ is reduced. Virginia now actively promotes this model within her community and hopes other women will benefit too.
Hands-on knowledge
"Thanks to the training courses at FEM, I also learnt that toxic substances are bad for the soil in the long term, and therefore also for my harvest. Today, I only use organic products to control pests. In the FEM seminars, I learnt how to do this with the help of compost"
– Virginia, Fundación Entre Mujeres
