Surfer-developers found a school in Nicaragua

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“Pick a number,” Lynn Blumenfeld said, beaming as she and auction volunteer Paula Schiff announced the total donations that organizers accumulated at a silent auction on July 12 in support of Una Escuelita, an after-school program in Nicaragua with East Hampton connections.

“25K,” replied John Mullen, a retired architect who hosted the benefit at his East Hampton waterfront home.

“Not even close. Forty thousand with everything!”

The event marked the promising beginning of efforts to provide continuing support for Una Escuelita, which is devoted to helping children age 2-12 learn about life through the medium of art.

Frank Roccanova of Amagansett, co-founder of the program, explained the fundamental philosophy behind Una Escuelita. The program, he asserted, places art at the forefront of all learning. “Art is the engine that pulls the train—the train could be any field,” he said.

The $40,000 raised at the event came from the sale of $100-a-person tickets for entrance to the benefit and from the auctioning of artwork and gift certificates donated by a group of local artists, companies and organizations. Mr. Roccanova and Una Escuelita’s co-founder, Livingston Pope Noell III, another local artist, plan to use the auction proceeds for art supplies, additional storage space for food, and a new classroom for Una Escuelita.

Mr. Roccanova has a background in the image retouching business. He is a former partner in Spano Roccanova Retouching, the first retouching studio in Manhattan to go digital, he said. He retired in 1996 and has since moved to the East End to pursue fine art photography. Pope Noell, meanwhile, served in the Marine Corps from 1966 to 1970. He later built a successful construction business. Settling in East Hampton in 1990, he took a newfound interest in making abstract murals and primitive art.

After meeting in Amagansett through a mutual friend in the late 1990s, Mr. Roccanova and Mr. Noell started thinking business thoughts and decided to go into shirt manufacturing and retail. After creating prototypes and brochures, however, they dropped the plan. “We realized it would have been too much work to handle the profits and get into the mechanics of the business,” said Mr. Roccanova.

The two East Enders, obviously restless in retirement, next got the idea of venturing to Central America to go into the land development business, which was a natural for Mr. Noell, considering his background in construction and his local knowledge—thanks to his surfing habit. In fact, he moved to Costa Rica to surf. Mr. Roccanova regularly visited his buddy and photographed him and others surfing.

Mr. Roccanova and Mr. Noell came up with the idea of building a resort in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. The idea “intrigued me, partly because I’d have a place to stay during my winter trips,” Mr. Roccanova said.

The two abandoned the plan when they decided they did not like the foreigners who were infiltrating the city. “We didn’t like the people there—the town had a bad element, so we pulled the plug” on the resort project, said Mr. Roccanova.

He returned to Long Island, and Mr. Noell sought refuge in a primitive hut in Limon Dos, a poor dirt-road village without running water across the border in Nicaragua. Mr. Roccanova came to visit. “I wanted to see what Pope was so enchanted by this time,” Mr. Roccanova said.

They were still intrigued by the idea of land development and bought six acres of open land with the aim of subdividing the territory into saleable residential lots for the influx of foreign vacationers they expected to one day discover the place. But as they were subdividing the land in Limon Dos, they began to feel as if they were robbing land from an impoverished community.

They suddenly felt like the bad guys.

Una Escuelita “happened because of a very selfish reason: we wanted to feel good about ourselves. These children from this community have reaped the benefits from us being selfish,” Mr. Roccanova said. “Our hearts opened up to the community and because we were taking so much from the community, we wanted to give something back.”

Mr. Noell and Mr. Roccanova set up a board of directors with California-based business partner Robert Mendez and lawyer John Serpico to discuss funding and the overall direction of the organization. “It was definitely an exercise in patience and tolerance,” said Mr. Roccanova about the preliminary phases of the program’s physical and conceptual development.

They completed the construction of the sturdy, two-story Spanish-style Una Escuelita building in December 2007. The next month, they opened it as an after-school learning center and food shelter for local kids age two to 12, with two trained Nicaraguan teachers to assist children with their school work, and supervise the recreational and other activities at the center.