Honduras

The goal of this committee is to help impoverished communities in rural Honduras.  Today, 53% of the population is living below the poverty line, and 20% of the population lives in such extreme poverty that they cannot  feed their families.  Considered the third poorest country in Latin America, the unemployment rate towers at 28%, and 25% of the population over the age of 15 are illiterate. 

We work with a non-governmental organization (NGO) called FUCOHSO that targets "at-risk" communities.  We focus on helping youth in such communities, as gang memberships have soared recently and are contributing to crime and drug use.  Oftentimes, kids who leave rural communities to make money in the city often feel they have no alternative. We are focusing on helping the education system in Honduras and raising the standard of living while also respecting important cultural aspects. 

Last year, once we decided to work towards a summer service trip to Honduras, we concentrated on educating ourselves about Honduran culture and the issues being faced. We also focused on logistics, such as fundraising for the service trip and choosing which NGO to work with. We settled on FUCOHSO because we admired its particular model of sustainable development and felt strongly about its collaborative approach.

FUCOHSO assigned us to work in the rural community of Calpules, which they had targeted as an at-risk community due to the low income of its residents. FUCOHSO works specifically with the community’s school in order to ensure the upcoming generation attends school and receives a basic education. One of the biggest obstacles for the school in Calpules has been keeping the children in school for the full day. The school did not have a kitchen, so the children needed to go home to eat and would rarely return to school afterward. Our group built a kitchen for the school, fenced in the area, and planted a garden in order to make the school environment welcoming but also structured. Children will now attend school for a set number of hours a day and will not be permitted to leave until dismissed. While this certainly will not solve all the problems in the school system, it is a step towards creating a more structured setting for education to take place. We also worked to get children excited about learning by teaching some lessons ourselves. Through this interaction, we were able to bond with the members of the community and learn from one another. In addition to working on the school, we donated school supplies, clothing, and toothbrushes to the members of the community. We helped three individuals with urgent medical assistance by transporting them to hospitals and paying for their treatment. All the service on the trip was a collaborative effort between the Calpules community, FUCOHSO, and our committee.

This year we plan to share our experience with the Tufts community in order to educate others about both Honduran culture and the problems the nation faces (primarily poverty). We will return to Calpules next summer to build eighteen latrines. We have received some funding from the region’s Minister of Health, and all other costs will be covered by our own fundraising efforts. The work we do during this school year will be largely focused on funding this next project and planning out the logistics of how to best go forward with the latrines.