Cultivating a Revolutionary Spirit

Bill Lankford visited Nicaragua in 1984 to see the Sandinista revolution for himself. What he found led this physics professor to volunteer his skills teaching at the Central American University in Managua. There, he and his students developed a solar cooking project which took on a life of its own, spreading throughout the five countries of Central America. In Cultivating a Revolutionary Spirit, Bill describes how local women used the tools of carpentry to build solar ovens and how they used the tools of feminism to take more control over their own lives and their communities. Bill leveraged his personal resources as a white North American man - professionally educated, fluent in English, with access to money and connections - to facilitate the work of Central American women who started by building ovens and went on to create an array of projects to meet basic needs, improve health, and increase access to educational and leadership opportunities for women.