Winds of Peace are blowing across this planet, as always. There are people and initiatives and happenings that are defying the dominant stories of oppression, war and death. Sometimes those winds howl, with major breakthroughs, as in the evolution and success of microlending worldwide. But other times, what is happening may be no more than just breezes, those small stories happening anonymously and quietly that are changing the circumstances, the context, the very lives of the poor and disenfranchised. That’s what I hope to present in these posts over the weeks and months to come, as we introduce introduce you to Winds of Peace Foundation and the remarkable stories gathered from our work in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua? It’s a place that many people could not even find on a map. And maybe that’s why it’s an appropriate place for Winds of Peace to be. That anonymity makes it an “everyman’s land,” a place to which any of us could have been born, a land confronted with circumstances that could be ours. And the people met there are, in fact, us. They dream, they aspire, they hope, they wonder, and they believe, in all of the same ways that everyone does. It’s easy to care about Rosa Adelina Barahona Castro or Carlos Bustamante because they’re like us, and they’re in our neighborhood. We generally like to hear stories of people “like us,” and so that’s what you’ll find at this site.

Some blog sites today seem to carry entries designed to create controvery or challenge in its readers. I won’t set out to do either, except to the extent that the real stories and circumstances presented here stir your feelings to think or to speak or to act in informed ways; that will be for you to decide. But I willrender the impressions and attitudes and conclusions experienced by this reporter with all of the passion and energy evidenced by our neighbors to the south. In the end the stories and observations will speak for themselves.

I hope you’ll join me periodically for the view; it’s well worth the climb….