Honduras

Blog Post:  Posted July 6, 2009, 1:24 am by Carlos Soto

Opportune dialogue in Honduras

Country: Honduras

Topics: Peaceful Change, Governance, Civil Society, Citizen Involvement

I still remember the dark days and the fear that the Cold War imprinted in all our souls. El Salvador and Guatemala were at war then, and Nicaragua became a communist state where Russian language was taught in schools. In the streets, hundreds died and thousands were missing.

As for Honduras, some 25,000 American troops took over the Palmerola Military Air Base in Comayagua, as well as provided money and technical support to the Contras, the guerrilla group fighting against the Nicaraguan communist regime. Those were days of bloodshed, torture and pain, days of car bombs and explosions, massive kidnappings, arms smuggling and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Those are days we don’t want to remember, days we all want to forget.

At the end of the 1990s I started working with Proyecto Aldea Global, Mercy Corps' local partner here in Honduras, implementing a civil society strengthening programme. Mercy Corps officials came from Portland, Oregon and trained us on the three civil society principles: participation in decision making, accountability and peaceful avenues for conflict resolution. We then went to Comayagua — the epicenter of military activity in the Cold War years — and worked with the communities there, teaching them the Honduran laws, then organising and training them on how to address local mayors and government officials, how to negotiate and how to solve their problems and differences through dialogue.

We offered the alternative of proposing solutions, not fighting.

The years went by and democracy was institutionalized here in Honduras: every four years, we've had the chance to have an election and to choose a new president. The new government was functioning under the 1982 National Constitution.

By 2006, the new president Manuel Zelaya Rosales took office, just as other presidents had done before him. Zelaya promised many things and worked hard for it, especially with the poor, yet there was an interesting difference between him and its predecessors: his strong ties with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. He signed a treaty with Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela under the name ALBA, aiming to promote commerce and cooperation between these governments. He then cut the ties with American oil companies and signed a new treaty to buy oil from Venezuelan companies only.

Hundreds of doctors and teachers came from Cuba to volunteer in Honduras from Cuba and, during the U.S. – Bolivian diplomatic conflict in September 2008, Honduras sided with Bolivia and challenged the U.S. by not receiving the credentials of their new ambassador for several days.

The current problem started when President Zelaya claimed that the Honduran Constitution was obsolete and then proposed that a new constitution must be signed into law. The current Honduran Constitution allows changes and reforms, as long as they are approved by the Congress; in fact, the Constitution has gone through many changes during the last 20 years, and many other changes were proposed. But there are some articles which the Constitution forbids to change, one of them being the article that prohibits Presidential re-election.

Honduras was governed by militaries for at least 40 years. Arms, force and coup d’état were the “modus operandi” selected by military generals to subdue the country, and some of these “governments” lasted more than 15 years in power. The fear of being deceived and the fear of generals to holding power again motivated the original citizens and lawyers who prepared the 1982 Constitution to close any door to re-election.

So President Zelaya attempted to change the Constitution in Honduras, spurring the present crisis because more than half of the population has rejected the idea of changing it.

But there are many at fault here. What did we do while all this was happening? Did the political parties express their opinion and seek dialogue with the president? No, they didn’t, they just criticized him and called him a mad cow. The Chamber of Commerce ignored him, the church said that they would be praying and the rest of the civil society kept doing business as usual.

There was a schism in the country — and a dangerous one — but no one turned to dialogue, they just ignored it.

Finally, in May 2009, a few lawyers and the General State Prosecutor declared President Zelaya's proposed changes illegal and demanded him to stop it. In spite of legal threats and resolutions, the president and his followers continued with all the preparations. One of the problems the president had to face was the money for this process, but the president did not present a national budget to the Congress in 2008 (even though the law says he must do it by September of each year). So, without a budget, he could use the state money at will. Even today, the Honduran government is operating without a fixed budget. The papers for the constitutional process were printed in Venezuela and tons of money was distributed among politicians to pay for the logistics demanded by a national referendum for at least seven million people.

The second problem faced by the president was logistics: President Zelaya was relying on the army to oversee the constitutional referendum. But the chiefs of the army, naval and air force refused to cooperate and all resigned on one single day. The President then turned to the local police for logistical support.

When the day of the referendum arrived on June 28, no one knew what was going to happen. That morning, the judicial court and the army reacted by arresting the president, accusing him of violating the Constitution and deporting him to Costa Rica. They thought that once he was gone, the problems would also vanish. They were wrong.

Today, I see my country facing United Nations and Organisation of American States sanctions. The borders with Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador are closed, and the Honduran people are running here and there all in despair.

At this critical time, I remember what I learned long time ago with those Mercy Corps officials: “Dialogue is important, but opportune dialogue is even more important.” There are times when dialogue loses its momentum and effectiveness — we should never get to that point.

Last night, now-deposed president Zelaya flew in a private Venezuelan jet plane — along with the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay —and tried to land in Honduras, but their plane was not cleared to land. They had to fly to El Salvador, where the newly-elected president, Mauricio Funez received him with opened arms. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

This November, a presidential election is scheduled here in Honduras. If we reach it in one piece and living democratically, we should feel blessed.

And so I repeat this lesson: dialogue is important, but opportune dialogue is even more important.

Posted November 24, 2008

Helping Honduras

Country: Honduras

Topics: Emergencies

Floodwaters have mostly receded, but Mercy Corps continues to deliver food and emergency supplies to families displaced by the most destructive tropical storm to hit Honduras in a decade.

We're helping restart agricultural production by distributing corn and bean seeds to 1,300 farmers — enough to plant 2,300 acres worth of food crops lost due to torrential rains.

Getting farmers back to work is critical to meeting the nutritional needs of Honduran families. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that 320,000 people are affected by intense rainfall that has led to conditions aid workers compare to Hurricane Mitch, which killed more than 5,000 people in 1998.

Although the number of deaths in this disaster has been much less — 60 people — the flooding has been worse, according to Chet Thomas, Mercy Corps' representative in Honduras and director of Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG). Across Honduras, more than 70,000 people are in need of shelter and the number in need of food assistance is increasing, according to the UN. Devastating crop losses have been reported.

An Immediate Response

Our emergency response has included distribution of basic food supplies, critical medicines and health kits, blankets for children and adults, soap and shelter canvases to more than 3,000 families who've lost their homes, crops and livestock.

We continue to distribute mattresses, hygiene supplies and medical kits to affected families.

PAG and Mercy Corps are also beginning work to repair more than 70 community water systems that were severely damaged by flooding and landslides. We're helping deliver clean water to more than 50,000 people through our partnership with ITT Watermark. Two village-scale water-purification systems on loan from ITT are delivering up to 6,800 liters of potable water an hour each until municipal water is restored. Mercy Corps is an ITT Watermark emergency response partner, which includes a three-year, $1 million commitment from ITT to help provide safe water during water-related emergencies such as floods, hurricanes and cyclones.

A History of Helping

Mercy Corps has worked in Honduras since 1982 — longer than anywhere of the nearly 40 countries where we currently work. Many of our programmes directed by our 140-person staff are in and around Comayagua, an area severely affected by the rains. There, we're serving 400 communities through a network of community pharmacies, helping improve schools and reducing the incidence of domestic violence.

We also responded with assistance after Hurricane Mitch, making replanting crops a priority so farmers wouldn't miss an entire season.

Posted February 27, 2008 by Amie Wells

Building Education From the Ground Up

Country: Honduras

Topics: Education, Children

Comayagua, Honduras — Sara is an atypical 14-year-old in rural Honduras. The reason? She's still in school.

Most children in this tropical valley stop going to school before age 12, mostly because their families need them to work in limestone factories or to help harvest coffee, sugar cane or other crops.

Sara lives in a village a short drive outside Siguatepeque, one the larger cities in Honduras. But standing in front of her house, you wouldn't know you were anywhere close to a population centre. Located along a dirt track, the village consists only of a single-room schoolhouse, a tienda and a smattering of modest metal-roofed homes.

This village was constructed in the late 1990s for those displaced by Hurricane Mitch, which among other things destroyed 33,000 homes in Honduras and damaged another 50,000.

Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG), a longtime Mercy Corps partner, was one of the agencies to respond to Mitch's trail of devastation. In Comayagua, a department in central Honduras, PAG replaced schools destroyed by floods and built new ones — 67 in total.

But PAG did more than just erect buildings; it built a foundation for education to prosper.

Fourteen-year-old Sara is the youngest daughter of Marta, a middle-aged mother of 10 who is playing a key role in PAG's efforts to improve education for Comayagua's youth.

When I visited Marta one afternoon, we sat down at the only table in her tidy two-room home. The first thing she did was point to one wall, which was covered by framed awards, certificates and other academic honors earned by her children.

Marta's two youngest — Sara and her 17-year-old sister — are still in school. Marta is committed to seeing them graduate — unlike her older children, who didn't finish as a result of both inadequate schools in their pre-Mitch community and the family's pressing financial needs.

For four years Marta has volunteered with PAG in a programme to ensure quality education in rural schools.

Marta explained that one of the problems with public education in Honduras is the way the system treats teachers. They're assigned schools by the government, are given very little training and are paid poorly for their work. What's more, their salary isn't tied to their attendance.

To support teachers and make sure they're providing quality instruction, PAG does two things. One is giving teachers comprehensive training, empowering them with the resources they need to be better educators. The other is making the community responsible for tracking teacher attendance and distributing paychecks based on those records.

Marta has been keeping track of all the teachers employed at her daughters' school. Every day, teachers must sign in and out with Marta, who showed me the well-worn ledger she used.

If teachers don't show up, they're not paid. And if it's a continual problem, the community can request their resignation.

The programme appears to be working: Marta said the programme makes the teachers feel more committed to the families, and vice-versa, and that only one teacher had been fired for non-attendance in the last four years.

In fact, the teachers have embraced the opportunities that accompany PAG's programme, including training sessions and efforts to improve school infrastructure.

Activities of the programme — called Programa de Educacion Lenca de Honduras in Spanish — include:

• Seminars for teachers to improve their teaching and evaluation skills, enhance classroom control and refine instruction techniques;
• Support to help parents better understand and increase their level of involvement in their children's education;
• Education for children on how to advocate for and defend their rights; and
• School infrastructure including classroom buildings, fences, latrines, water tanks and more.

The result? About 2,200 students in 13 municipalities have benefited from PAG's efforts to ensure sustainable and quality education. For Marta, that quality education will bring unprecedented benefits. Chances are good that in the next four years, she will hang the family's first two high-school diplomas on her wall.

Posted April 21, 2006 by Roger Burks

Conservation that Benefits Families

Country: Honduras

Topics: Environment, Agriculture

There aren't many places in the world where, from a single vantage point, you can get a clear view of Mercy Corps' work. I am fortunate that a 6,600-foot mountain in Honduras' Blue Mountain National Park offers just such an opportunity.

From this breathtaking vista, I can see dozens of communities that benefit from the park's environmental protection activities. I can also see Lake Yojoa, which provides livelihoods for hundreds of fishermen and supplies hydroelectric power to all of Honduras.

The Blue Mountain National Park, which has been managed and protected by Mercy Corps and local partner Proyecto Aldea Global since 1992, exists to conserve a vital watershed that provides clean water to thousands of families around the area. It also provides a self-sustaining operation, through eco-tourism and conference facilities, to maintain the area's abundant flora and fauna.

The park covers an area of 194 square miles and contains one of the highest cloud forests in Honduras. However, it is as just important for the everyday lives of local families as it is for its diverse ecosystem: the park supplies 70% of the water entering Lake Yojoa and provides clean, fresh water to families in 42 surrounding communities.

One of these communities is the tiny village of Los Pinos, where Mercy Corps helped pipe water from one of the park's springs to pumps situated throughout the town. The local primary school is also benefiting from the new water supply; instances of waterborne illness and preventable disease have decreased noticeably. Before Proyecto Aldea Global installed the water system, villagers depended on often-contaminated local ponds for their drinking water.

Environmental protection - and the benefits it brings to poor families - is a constant consideration in Mercy Corps' programme strategy. The agency and its local partners aim to implement projects that not only preserve ecosystems, but also contribute to community health, sustainable agriculture and economic development.

In neighboring Nicaragua, Mercy Corps is helping traditional coffee farmers use environmentally-friendly techniques that not only protect the land, but result in higher sales prices at harvest time. Coffee farmers are using sustainable, low-impact agroforestry techniques such as live fencing, contour lines and soil conservation. Mercy Corps provides training to farmers who want to implement these conservation measures on their farms - and also pays them an extra premium on each bag of coffee during the harvest.

In dozens of other countries around the world - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - Mercy Corps is balancing environmental well being with the critical needs of children and families.

As I stand on one of the highest peaks of Honduras' Blue Mountains, I can see exactly what Mercy Corps is doing for the environment - and it is beautiful.

Posted April 28, 2005

Filling the Information Gap in Honduras

Country: Honduras

Topics: HIV/AIDS, Health, Children

The Lindo family did not know why their 3-year-old daughter Teresa couldn't seem to shake a long-running illness. It seemed to have no cure.

Despite repeated visits to a health centre in Central Honduras' Comayagua Valley, Teresa's symptoms - weight loss, pallid skin and increased susceptibility to illness - continued to worsen.

The parents finally took her to a maternal healthcare clinic built and operated by Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG), Mercy Corps' partner organisation in Honduras. There, nurse Gloria Ventura talked to the parents, examined Teresa and administered a blood test. The results showed Teresa was HIV positive and was developing full-blown AIDS, and that the virus had been transmitted from her parents, both of whom also were HIV-positive.

Families like the Lindos are not uncommon in Honduras, where there are more people infected with HIV than in the rest of Central America combined.

Once infected, people with HIV/AIDS are essentially banished from the public realm. Ordinary Hondurans know little about the causes and effects of HIV/AIDS, and the void is filled by gross misconceptions. One widely shared view, for instance, is that the virus is spread through the air or by mosquitoes. In addition, traditional healthcare providers, who are sources of information and primary care for many rural communities, have been slow to come to grips with the disease.

Mercy Corps is filling this void with medical care and information. Providing AIDS education is part of a broad range of community health programmes that include domestic violence treatment and prevention programmes, local clinics and child-survival initiatives.

A principal aim is to correct misunderstandings about the disease. One Mercy Corps HIV/AIDS programme emphasizes education, home care, stigma reduction and teaching people how to care for people living with HIV/AIDS. Another is a PAG-led education programme for young people, emphasizing abstinence before marriage. Abstinence is just one option for HIV/AIDS prevention, so it isn't PAG's only message; its health centers offer condoms for sexually active persons.

For now, the Lindos are caring for their 3-year-old daughter and receiving anti-retroviral drug treatments to help prevent the onset of AIDS. With education and support, they have been accepted back into their community, says Mercy Corps' Chet Thomas. But the work is not over, and education must be ongoing.

"Families need to understand HIV/AIDS," says Thomas. "They need to know how it is spread and what can be done."

The name of the family has been changed to protect their identity.

Posted December 9, 2004 by Roger Burks

Sweet Success

Country: Honduras

Topics: Economic Development, Agriculture

For Victor Rodriguez, the taste of success is sweet. In fact, it has a distinct peachy flavour with hints of pineapple.

Victor, a farmer who lives with his family in the Honduran highlands near the town of Bella Vista, is enjoying the fruits of his labour as he harvests delicious honey from beehives. After donning protective gear including a netted mask, he carefully extracts the honeycomb from each hive.

The honey, fragrant with an aroma of spicy fruit, will help Victor earn additional income to support his wife and four small children. It's a sweet proposition for his family, who live in a tiny house in one of the country's poorest regions.

The past several years haven't been kind to Honduran farmers like Victor. They saw their fortunes change nearly overnight as a result of the global coffee crisis. Shortly before that economic collapse, Honduras was nearly flattened by the fury of Hurricane Mitch. This one-two punch destroyed Honduran farms, plunging already-poor families into even more desperate poverty.

In the wake of these dual disasters, Mercy Corps and local partner organisation Project Global Village started the Small Species Programme to help impoverished farmers recover and rebuild. This programme donates livestock such as goats, chickens, pigs and bees to rural farm families and trains them how to care for them.

The Small Species Programme serves several families in each community to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity for a brighter future. In Bella Vista, there are six families with beehives. They learned about the programme through community meetings organised by Mercy Corps.

When families expressed interest in participating, a Mercy Corps agricultural officer was assigned to begin work with them. These agricultural officers continue to visit each family, including Victor's, on a weekly basis to make sure that their projects are going well.

With help from Mercy Corps, Victor's farm is really buzzing again. Not only have the beehives produced an abundant supply of delectable honey, but Victor swears that the bees' activity has made his coffee and other crops flourish.

Victor has also become a bit of an entrepreneur: he's built nearly a dozen hives for tiny, bee-like insects called Gimeritos, which don't sting and make a luscious, wild-tasting honey.

"I don't know of any other farmers who've had success raising Gimeritos," says Adan, the agricultural officer who works with Victor. "Victor has taken our assistance and used it to blaze his own paths."

Victor plans on selling both regular and Gimerito honey to stores and at roadside stands. He is very optimistic about the prospects for extra money to support his family.

"Mercy Corps helped me learn a new skill and open up more possibilities," Victor says. "I'm more confident about the future now."

Posted November 11, 2004 by Roger Burks

Going the Distance for Children in Honduras

Country: Honduras

Topics: Education, Children

Elsie Reyes is committed to education - very committed.

Every weekday, the young teacher walks more than an hour each way over rough, hilly roads to get to her classroom. She has to leave her home in the town of Santa Elena, Honduras before dawn to reach the school in tiny Los Pinos before her students arrive.

Although it's a difficult path at times, Reyes is glad to travel it.

"This is the first year they've ever had school in this village," she said. "Before that, the nearest school was an hour away, in my home town. Many generations of children in Los Pinos never even set foot in a school."

Mercy Corps, working alongside its Honduran partner Project Global Village, constructed the school and hired Reyes as the village's first full-time teacher. As part of their commitment to bring education to Los Pinos, the organisations also built a latrine for the school and piped fresh, clean spring water from a nearby rainforest to the school and houses in the village.

Three months after the school opened its doors, about twenty students attend classes each weekday. Reyes teaches grades 1-3 as well as a "preparatory" class, similar to kindergarten.

She covers subjects like mathematics, science, social studies and Spanish. The classroom is brightly decorated with maps, charts and the fanciful drawings and other creations of young students. It's obvious from watching the smiling faces of the children that they are having fun while learning.

At the present time, there aren't any secondary schools in the area - the closest one is well over an hour away by car. However, villages in the area get secondary school education over local radio stations, through a government programme sponsored by organisations including Mercy Corps.

Reyes says she hopes that one of the towns in the area, perhaps even her hometown of Santa Elena, will get a secondary school sometime soon.

For now, Mercy Corps is working to finish and furnish a small house adjacent to the school where Reyes can live.

"It will be good to be near the school and village, so that I can spend more time with the children and maybe even teach more classes," Reyes enthused.

Even though she'll be closer to her school, it's clear that Elsie Reyes will continue to go the extra mile for her students.

Posted September 30, 2004 by Roger Burks

Breaking the Silence

Country: Honduras

Topics: Women's Empowerment, Civil Society

In rural Honduras, poverty and hunger gnaw away at families every day. However, there's another daily tragedy tearing village households apart: domestic violence.

Domestic violence is a hidden and largely secret affliction among Honduran families. The silence surrounding domestic abuse veils any attempt to gather statistics about the problem. However, rumours and telltale bruises reveal the truth: it's rampant. From time to time, the silence is broken with the death of a woman or child.

Mercy Corps, working with local partner Project Global Village, is bringing the heartbreak and danger of domestic violence out in the open, in order to change attitudes and save lives.

Launched in 1999, the Mercy Corps programme is called DEBORAH. It seeks to intervene in cases of domestic violence by providing legal services to women, families and communities.

For years, one of the biggest obstacles to reducing domestic abuse in Honduras has been the perception that it is simply "an aspect of the culture." Many parts of Honduran society, including communities, the police and local churches, hold on to this mindset.

The DEBORAH programme aims to change this way of thinking by teaching women to defend their rights, as well as empowering communities to support them.

From the outset of the programme, Mercy Corps has sought to enlist the aid of local police, politicians, judges and other community leaders in the struggle against domestic violence. Today, the DEBORAH programme has enormous support and collaboration from local authorities.

Over the past four years, the programme's paralegal officers have managed more than 750 counselling cases in four Honduran cities. From those cases, there have been 211 non-aggression agreements between couples reached out of court, and 450 alimony settlements. Nearly 2000 people have visited the law libraries located in the DEBORAH programme's four office locations. Since its founding, the programme has educated over 2500 community members, including teachers, religious leaders and politicians.

In Taulabe, one of the cities where the programme maintains an office, there are currently 300 clients in legal orientation classes and 200 clients undergoing domestic violence counselling. In addition, DEBORAH paralegal officers recently trained 60 teachers to speak out against domestic violence.

Kayla, one of the paralegal officers in Taulabe, has been working with the DEBORAH programme for the last two and a half years. She meets and counsells women who come to the office, which is located in the local municipal building. She sees up to seven clients each day.

"We give self-esteem classes and provide a counselling programme to help women and families heal," Kayla said.

Kayla often goes to local schools that have night classes to teach people about domestic violence and explain DEBORAH's programmes. Educating communities about domestic abuse is integral to breaking the cycle of violence that plagues Honduran families.

"Sometimes, after we've done a teacher training, children have gone home from school and told their abused moms to seek help at DEBORAH," Kayla said.

The DEBORAH programme is unique in Honduras: it's a grassroots approach to educating communities, resolving conflict and building a society that's safer for women and children.

Mercy Corps is helping Honduran women break the silence of domestic violence and gain their own strong voice.

Posted February 21, 2002

Civil Society Programs Give Voice to Rural Honduras

Country: Honduras

Topics: Peaceful Change, Civil Society

It would be easy for the average person living in a village in the Comayagua municipality in central Honduras to feel like she has no voice in local and national politics.

The villages in the region are often remote and inaccessible, and their people struggle to survive from one harvest to another. The issues they face are unique and are often difficult for government officials working in offices in the capital to understand.

With the help of a Mercy Corps civil society programme implemented through longstanding local partner, Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG), rural villagers in Comayagua and elsewhere in Honduras are discovering that their voices can be powerful and Honduran politicians are starting to take notice.

The programme, funded for two years by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Thornwood and SG Foundations, has worked to bridge the gap between local civic groups, including municipal development committees called patranatos associations, and regional and national officials.

“I talked with a variety of people from women’s groups to local mayors and they all confirmed that the civil society programme in Honduras has done an amazing job of helping to empower community groups,” said Mercy Corps assistant programme officer Sarah Buckley, who recently visited the programme areas in Honduras and Nicaragua

Buckley said that one highlight of the programme occurred during this past winter’s presidential election race. Working with a coalition of 11 patranatos associations, Mercy Corps/PAG staff helped to organise meetings involving the leading presidential candidates, including the eventual winner, Ricardo Maduro, and local citizens. In the meeting, candidates were asked sign statements saying that they would work on local development issues and maintain a dialogue with the patranatos associations.

“It was a pretty powerful example that individuals working together can take charge of their lives and their communities. By impacting issues on a national level it has inspired people to say ‘We can do it. We can make a difference,’” Buckley said.

The coalition also organised town hall meetings with mayoral candidates in six municipalities, allowing citizens to ask questions and give input about the needs of their communities.

Buckley said that Mercy Corps’ civil society programmes in Nicaragua have also focused on creating a network of civic groups and have encouraged dialogues with local municipalities.

Bringing together 26 civil society groups in the Jinotega region and the municipal mayor, the programme helped to draft a strategic development plan for the region.

“It has been difficult bringing groups with diverse backgrounds and agendas together, but I think we have demonstrated to both individuals and government officials that civil society can and should play an important role in Nicaragua,” Buckley said.

Posted August 28, 2001

Teen Helps Hondurans and Challenges 'Bad Rap'

Country: Honduras

Listen to people and the media talk about today's teenagers and sooner or later the subject of teen apathy will arise. Young people aren't involved in their communities, they aren't interested in civic affairs, and they have little knowledge of the world at large.

Don't tell Elizabeth Edwards any of this, however.

"I am trying to do a lot to combat the bad rap high school students get these days," says Edwards, a 17-year old senior at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. "More and more of us are volunteering. A lot of teens are getting involved in causes they really care about."

Edwards knows a thing or two about volunteer service. She was part of a group of eight youth volunteers from the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland who recently returned from a 10-day trip to Honduras where they worked with Mercy Corps partner, Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG), to help a family of four in Flor del Campo enlarge and improve its house.

The family, a mother and her three children, had been living in a cramped shelter.

"We worked hard to extend the foundation of the house and to start building the walls," says Edwards. "The family was really excited. The kids and their mum helped us to move things around and were very involved in the process."

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral first began work in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country in 1998. This is the second year that the church has sent a youth group to Flor del Campo, a slum outside of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. Edwards was a member of last year's group that worked with PAG to construct two new houses in the slum. Proficient in Spanish, Edwards was chosen to be one of two leaders for this year's trip.

The volunteer trip was coordinated in conjunction with Mercy Corps/PAG, which has been active in Honduras for 15 years and has extensive projects in Flor del Campo. The trip was funded through private money, as well as funds raised by the youth group. Edwards says the group organised a theater performance and a buy-a-brick fundraiser.

In addition to its construction project, the youth group spent a few days in the PANACAM National Park planting 325 pine trees and performing trail maintenance

What does Edwards think was the biggest impact the group made during the trip?

"It is not so much that we went there and built something or planted trees," says Edwards who plans to major in Spanish and Pre-Med in college. "It is more that we have taken time to get to know people and to show that we care. It is a very personal experience and it lets the people know that we aren't just sitting at home in 'El Norte' and that we care about them."

Edwards says that despite difficulties such as the recent Honduran postal strike she has been able to keep in touch with her host family and she hopes to someday return again to Honduras.

As for advice she would give to other young people:

"Just find something that interests you. There is something out there for everyone," she says.