Helping Honduras Kids (and ideas for the future)

As we were investigating the feasibility of establishing Las Sonrisas de los Niños, we visited a large orphanage west of La Ceiba called SOS and met a gentleman associated with SOS named David Ashby.  He was an American who had been a soils scientist with a large fruit company and had lived in Honduras for 30 plus years.  We also had learned there was a building on the main highway, fairly close to the dirt road leading to Cacao, that was intended to serve some charitable purpose but had always sat empty.  Otherwise, during the time we were developing and opening Las Sonrisas de los Niños, we were fairly oblivious to events around us.  As it happened, David Ashby had formed an organization called Helping Honduras Kids, which consisted of a number of projects in the La Ceiba area, and one of these was an orphanage.  We learned the building in nearby Agua Caliente had been constructed as a legacy for deceased singer Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes, a member of a popular American band called TLC, who had visited Honduras many times and tragically died in an auto accident near Cacao.  Subsequent to her death the Lisa Lopes Foundation Foundation was created, and recently they partnered with Helping Honduras Kids to establish the orphanage, so the formerly vacant building is now a home filled with the voices of children.  As fate would have it, the orphanage opened within a couple weeks of us. 

Gradually we developed a relationship- they would donate some excess food items to us, and we started bringing their younger kids over to spend some mornings at Las Sonrisas de los Niños, giving them a chance to meet new kids outside of the orphanage and have some new experiences.  They kindly sold us computers at a very reduced price, and we tried to help them establish a well (unfortunately still in progress as we haven't hit water yet).  They introduced us to a group called Amigos of Honduras who visited us and made a very generous donation.  They allowed one of our volunteers to stay at their facility and several times we had their volunteers over to hopefully give them a break from their very demanding and important work.  All in all, we feel extremely fortunate to have a Helping Honduras Kids project nearby and are very appreciative of their support, and we look forward to a mutually beneficial on-going relationship with them (and we REALLY hope to hit water when we return to driving the well point!).

For more information of each of these groups visit www.helpinghonduraskids.org, www.lisalopesfoundation.org, and www.amigosofhonduras.org.  And- many thanks to David Ashby, Eve Horowitz (the volunteer coordinator for Helping Honduras Kids), David Riley and Michael Burton (and his son Sam) of Amigos of Honduras, and Karl Ralian (to be perfectly honest, we are not sure what organization he's with, but we know he collects and ships invaluable quantities of supplies to Honduras!).

Goals, Plans, Hopes, Possibilities

ONE THING that surprised us soon after we opened was that the amount of time, energy, effort needed to keep things running far exceeded our expectations.  For this reason, we hope to attract a long-term volunteer to serve as an activities director.  If one investigates the world of volunteering, there is a wide variation in terms of situations available.  Some organizations arrange for volunteer opportunities and charge people hundreds and even thousands of dollars for the privilege, whereas (less commonly) there are positions that pay for all expenses, and include a stipend (usually specific professional or managerial type jobs).  We think we'll fall somewhere between the two- if we can find a person interested in a long-term commitment, almost certainly we'll cover room and board and perhaps other expenses as well depending how things play out.  If anyone is interested in this position PLEASE contact us.

AS WE think about the direction we want to take our project, we are considering both big and small ideas, and the reason we are including this topic on this page is that we want to share whatever we do with the local community, which includes our neighbors at Helping Honduras Kids.  Our project owns quite a bit of land, and we are slowly developing a garden with which we hope to provide fruits and vegetables for our project.  We make our land available to any local person who would like to have their own area to garden and hope we'll have increasing numbers of people taking advantage of this, perhaps including the kids at the orphanage and some of our older kids as well.

For a poor community of perhaps 1,800 people, El Cacao has plenty of illnesses but no medical facilities (actually there is a small hospital complex, built and fully stocked several years ago, but never opened!).  In order to receive any kind of a medical care, the average person has to travel either to the town of Jutiapa or the city of La Ceiba and, because of the constraints of poverty, they tend to wait until illnesses progress and the minor has become grave.  Though we realize we are in no position to open and operate such a project, we hope to use our resources and contacts to facilitate some type of regular medical clinic, even if it's only a day or 2 per week.

From the beginning we've tried to think of a meaningful economic activity for the community that would truly address a need and be within our abilities to bring to fruition.  There seems to be plenty of souvenirs and textile products about, but one item that is almost non-existent is shelving.  Somehow this entire country evolved without home storage options!!  So, having reasonably good carpentry and cabinet making skills, we are thinking of establishing some type of small woodworking shop and letting it serve as an tiny unofficial vocational school for the older kids (though many of our goals involve supplementing literacy, improving overall awareness of the world around us, and enhancing future prospects for the kids that attend our project, Las Sonrisas de los Niños is not a school, which is an important distinction to make in Honduras).

We made Rafael, the Director of the Central American Spanish School (www.ca-spanish.com), an offer he couldn't refuse in terms of offering him a small portion of our land at a very favorable price.  This transaction is close to completion (one learns that things take time in Central America as compared to the US, which has both advantages and disadvantages!) and we hope and think this will eventually evolve into a small branch facility of the Central American Spanish School being established.  This would allow interested volunteers to attend classes near the project, possibly to include volunteers at Helping Honduras Kids as well.  Perhaps our ultimate goal/dream is to create a little community which would include some housing for volunteers, productive gardens, opportunities for the local people and, most of all, a place where kids from the surrounding villages will always have a safe and clean place to do fun and meaningful things.

Rafael with Becky & Gail on graduation day from the Central American Spanish School