As places go, Managua probably isn’t at the top of your “somewhere I’d like to live for a while” list. There is Paris of course, and Rome. Maybe you imagine yourself living it up in Manhattan or getting away from it all in the Caribbean, but Managua? I’m sure living in Managua “some-day” hasn’t wandered into your day-dreams lately but it’s exactly where I have been living these last few months.

Not quite sure you know where Managua is? Neither had I until a few months ago, turns out, it’s the capital of Nicaragua. Don’t know where that is either? Go and find yourself an atlas of go on Google Maps.

Nicaragua is a beautiful land of lakes and volcanoes. Since the beginning of my trip, I had always planned to live here awhile, improve my Spanish and do some volunteer work. I day-dreamed about living somewhere like this

Instead, I ended up living here.

Managua might not be the most glam of cities. It’s constanly hot and humid, it’s not pretty and the traffic is a nightmare. I found myself staying in this chaotic city because I decided to volunteer with an amazing food rescue NGO. And you know what, I love it here. I live with a gorgeous Nicaraguan family and the work I am doing has become a passion bordering on obsession.

I work with Eat United a grass-roots food rescue group based on a simple concept. We rescue good food that would otherwise be wasted and share it communities in need. It’s a logical, local solution to a global problem, and its working. We run on an absolute shoe-string, our “office” is the kitchen table of one of the volunteers. Despite this, over 25,000kg of fruit and veggies have been saved since 2013 and we regularly share food with 200 a week.

We throw out around a third of all food produced in the world, while at the same time, hundreds of millions of people go hungry. Obviously as far as shit things happening in the world go, good food getting chucked out while people starve is right up the top.  Even in a developing country like Nicaragua, where one in five people go without enough to eat, tonnes of good food is thrown out every day. Our food system is broken and Eat United is working to do something about it.

Everyone deserves access to healthy food in sufficient quantities and no one should be hungry when we produce more than enough food for all of us. In 2016 we want to expand our work, double the amount of people we share food with and create a paid role for a local Nicaraguan person.

To help us get there we have created Snap Your Snack, a campaign that’s all about celebrating snacks with a selfie! Snap Your Snack isn’t about giving massive donations, but it is about coming together, celebrating food, and using the global reach of social media to support a local solution in Nicaragua.

Getting involved is fun and easy.

1. Snap it. Take a selfie celebrating your snack.
2. Make a small donation to Eat United Nicaragua through our crowd-funding page, either as individuals or a group.
3. Post your selfies and screenshot of your donation on social media with the hashtag #SnapYourSnack.
4. Tag friends to do the same.

My fellow bloggers, I need your help in sharing the shit out of this campaign to get the word out.

Have a look at this awesome (short) video that shows the impact Eat United is making in a way words can’t 

and share it where you can

Get on Twitter and search the hashtag #snapyoursnack and follow twitter.com/Eat_United and re-tweet links to our campaign.

Anything you can do to help us grow this campaign would be amazing.A little bit of help from lots of people adds up to a big help for people that need it.