Billboards of Daniel Ortega standing fist in air proclaiming “Up the poor!” are ubiquitous throughout the land. The President’s showcase program called Zero Hunger is supposedly designed to raise up the poor, but it may apply to only some of them. There is ongoing criticism and questioning of its mechanisms for giving the poor a leg up. The well-intentioned program consists of distributing hens, pregnant cows, and crop seed to poor country folk throughout the country, along with a “production bond” to be used to finance expanded family farm production. The program does not make use of already-existing organizations and associations that have experience with development work in the countryside. Instead, the giveaways are doled out by FSLN party structures that are the nuclei of a new organizational form called Citizen Power Councils, or CPCs.