My Dreams

Since coming back from Copan and a conference full of 200 plus people who are beaming with passion about Honduras and the work they do here, my mind has been going at full speed with ideas and projects that I hope to maybe do. And so here is a little preview for what my year might be composed of.

1. Domestic Violence Support Group: Domestic violence is one of the biggest and least spoken about problems in Honduras. It is the number two killer of people after traffic accidents. And yet very little is done with the victims of these violent acts. In a culture that is dominated by machismo and in families where dads are often absent, the women many times take the full burden of caring for families and when they are abused have no way out. In Talanga, there is an office in the police station that handles cases of domestic violence. And the plan is that we will start a support group in January for female victims of violence. It will happen once a week and will be a devotional style meeting and will create a safe space for women to be with other women and share their stories. The hope is that these meetings will help the women to heal, but also to prevent them from going back to violent situations. It will be the first support group in Talanga.

2. Street Kid Youth Group: Walking down the street in Talanga, you pass by at least two or three children who have no shoes, holes in their shirts, and dirt everywhere. They might have a home, but often their parents are absent and they are being raised by an older sibling. Many are not in school and children as old as 9 still don’t know how to read. And so my hope is that I will start a group just for these kids. I want to call them the Turtles and teach them that everything they need they already have—just like turtles. I want to read with them, I want to teach them, and then I want to give them some food so that they don’t have to beg for it. This will probably be one of the hardest projects to do since they have very little discipline and seem to run wild all day. We will see how my first meeting goes this week on Thursday (11/1).

3. School Exchange: Talanga is better off than the aldeas. Just like any city compared to a rural setting, Talanga seems to have more resources, more jobs, and life seems a little easier here. The aldeas are a lot poorer. And here is my train of thought: I leave in a year and who are the future of this country? The kids. I leave this country in a year in the hands of the kids and so these are the people that need to know about what life is like in the poorer areas of Honduras. And so my idea is to have a pen pal/ switcheroo between the children of a class in Talanga and a class in an aldea. It would start with an exchange of letters and photos and then depending on how successful it could result in them each spending a day with the other in their respective schools and maybe even overnight…but that might be getting a little crazy.

4. Craft lessons to Women: Most of the women in all of the aldeas we have visited do not have jobs. Their job is to stay at home, clean, and cook. For many, they have no income of their own and no way of earning an income. At the conference, I met a lady who had taught a large group of women how to do origami and then they turned this into jewelry. And so I am in the process of teaching myself origami and then I am looking to work with a group of women in maybe one or two aldeas to teach them this craft so that they then can start making goods to sell.

At this point, these are all just dreams some further along than others. I still have to talk to a lot of people in the community and so we will just have to see whether any of these become a reality or not.