Scholarship Profile - Karen (by Todd)

Story #2:

Karen is 14 years old. She graduated from elementary school at age 12, but couldn’t go to secondary school last year because she got sick, and for financial reasons. This year, she will be going because our scholarship fund has committed to pay for her three years of secondary school.

Karen’s father died 8 years ago. She lives with her single mother, Euphemia, who is still raising 3 of her 8 kids. Euphemia is also raising four grandkids – that’s seven children and one single mother.

Euphemia – the mother – is the midwife for the small town of Los Izotes. She wanted to be a nurse, but was never able to afford the education. Karen wants to be a nurse just like her mom did. Before I told her about the scholarship, Karen had a plan to become one. She would study for two years as a seamstress, which she could do very cheaply. Then she’d work for a while until she raised enough money to pay for secondary school. Then, probably more work to get the money to pay for training as a nurse.

As it is, we’ve saved Karen at least three years and made the possibility of her becoming a nurse much more real. Besides the fact that it is wonderful to enable a child’s education, I am thrilled because little towns like Los Izotes need nurses. It’s an hour walking to the nearest nurse for the people of Los Izotes. A whole day to get to a doctor. They need better health care. And it’s my hope that in accepting Karen, we’ve not only helped her, we’ve helped a whole town that she might some day serve.

Make a Donation to the scholarship fund.

Scholarship Profile - Ana (by Todd)

I'm going to post stories about some of the scholarship winners. Here's the first one.

I was in the aldea of Los Izotes, walking around, and inviting people to apply for the scholarship. I came to a house (withabout half a dozen giggling kids in tow) where there live two girls who we know pretty well from coming to Los Izotes every Friday.

One of the girls is fourteen, the other is twenty. I told them about the scholarship, and then sat down to answer any questions. To my surprise, the 20-year old, Ana, bombarded me with questions. I sat talking to her for 45 minutes! Normally it takes me 5 minutes.

Is there an age limit? How important are grades? What else is it based on? What does it cover? -- I could tell by all her questions that she was very interested.

And then she asked me if she could take the scholarship and go to school in Talanga.

Let me do a little bit of background here. Los Izotes is a small aldea of about 300 people. It is about an hour away driving from Talanga, where we volunteers live. Talanga is a ‘big’ town of 30,000, with four secondary schools. Los Izotes has no secondary school. But there is a nearby, larger aldea, which does. That school is about an hour away from Los Izotes walking. With a bike, which is included in the scholarship, it’s 15 or 20 minutes.

So I was surprised that she would prefer to go to a school in Talanga, which would mean she would have to live with relatives during the week. Going to the nearby school, she could live at home with her family.

So I investigated more. It turns out that girls do not feel safe making the trip to that high school alone. They don’t even feel safe walking with other boys from the town. Ana told me that two girls would have to go together for it to be a safe venture.

As a result, no girls from Los Izotes currently go to secondary school. Three boys do. As I thought about it, I realized people had been talking around the fact all along. One mother earlier that day said she’d send her daughter to school if another girl went.

“Wow,” I thought to myself, “I was in this for social justice, and lo and behold, it intersects with feminism too!” (Maybe I wasn't that eloquent when I was thinking to myself, but you get the idea :).

But that’s not all. I asked her why she had never gone to secondary school, since she’d graduated from elementary school some five or six years earlier. She said that she enrolled in school, but that after a few months, her father pulled her out. “He said he didn’t have the desire to be putting a girl through school anymore.” As it turns out, the same thing happened to her 14-year old sister.

Feminism again. I guess there are two things going on here. First, there are these two girls, at least one of whom clearly has great desire to go to school, and they can’t because of their family structure, and because they’re girls. But giving them a scholarship would enable them to go, even if they didn’t have that support from their father.

And second, there is the fact that one girl alone can’t get to the secondary school. I think it’s a bit of chicken-and-egg: the few girls who want to go to school are all waiting for someone else to commit to going before they commit themselves. I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “What if we funded two?” If we could fund two girls, not only would it be getting those two girls to school, it would be opening the door for other girls to go as well.

Secondary school in Honduras is three years long. For those three years, any girl who wants to go to school will know that there are at least two other girls going with whom she could go safely.
As it turns out, we did commit to fund two girls from Los Izotes. And Ana was one of them. And in addition to those two girls, two other girls (for a total of four) will be entering "colegio" this year. I am so excited about that! Although I admit, I was a little surprised to find that in my pursuit of social justice I was doing a little bit of feminism on the side (my sister will be proud :) .

Make a Donation to the scholarship fund.

Honduras Scholarship Fund (by Todd)

In my previous post I alluded to scholarship fund I've set up to help some of the children in the aldeas get to secondary school. Let me tell you a little more about that.

Most of the kids in the aldeas make it through primary school, but virtually none go on to secondary school because the cost is too high. So it seemed a natural idea to try and organize a scholarship fund to help "apoyar" (support) education in the aldeas. And it's not just a matter of paying for one kids to go to high school. My hope has been that the scholarships will also be "icebreakers" - that once the children see several kids going to secondary school, the barrier will be lower for them to want to go as well, even if they don't have a scholarship.

I priced out what it would take to send a kid to secondary school, which is three years in Honduras, with everything they could conceivably need paid for. I came up with a sum of $700, to which I added an extra $100 for unforseen expenses.

So for $800, we can put a kid through all of secondary school. $800 doesn’t seem like a whole lot, especially when compared with, say, tuition for a year at college. But many of these families live on $15 a week. You can see how the cost is prohibitive.

My next step was to organize a group of Talangans to administer the scholarship, for two reasons. (1) I'm leaving in August, and someone needs to make sure the scholarship continues. (2) Talangans know much better than I all the little nuances - where to buy school supplies, what constitutes good performance in school, etc. etc.

As it turns out, the "Comite Economico" (economic committee) from the Catholic church in Talanga was really excited to take on the project. This is the group that organizes fundraising for the church - they just finished with a big raffle of a car. They are perfect, because they know all about managing finances! Plus, there are several teachers in the group.

About four weeks ago, we picked our scholarship winners. We have six (all of them girls, actually) from four different aldeas. The past two weekends I've gone shopping for school supplies with them (in Honduras, the school year has just started), and they were SO EXCITED at buying shoes, clothes, and a bike. it was really gratifying to see the looks on their faces.

On top of that, it's even more fulfilling because I know several of these girls pretty well from my work in their aldeas. So I know their stories, where they're coming from, and what the scholarship means to them. That's really neat. I think that's really a strength of our focus on accompaniment. I'm not only giving aid, but I really know the people I'm helping. In fact, I'll put up some more posts about them so you all can know them too.

At this point, I will put in my fundraising blurb: I am still trying to raise the money to cover the rest of these girls' educations. I've got enough for this year, but I am still working for the next two. Any money that doesn't get used this year will be used next year, for someone else just as needy. So, if you have an inkling, even a small donation will be helpful, since the dollar is so strong.

You can see the post here for how to donate. If you want to earmark your donation specifically for the scholarship fund, please put "Honduras Scholarship Fund" in the comment field. Thank you.

It's a really neat project. I'm always thinking about ways to make sustainable changes. Education is a sustainable change. It’s an opportunity for these kids to learn skills and have a better life beyond just my short stay in Honduras or three years at school.

And let me tell you one more story - this is really, really neat! Last year, there were four students, all boys, enrolled in secondary school from the aldea of Los Izotes. We gave two scholarships in Los Izotes. This year, there are SIX students enrolled in just the first year, four of them are girls. At least one was definitely not going to go until she found out our two scholarship winners were going. So I think we really have helped break the ice there, which is GREAT!!!!

The Aldeas (by Todd)

Here is a little piece I wrote about our work in the aldeas.


“They can’t play,” the kids told me, pointing to two 11-year-old sisters.

“Nonsense,” I said (in Spanish). “Anyone who wants to can play Go Fish with us.”

But I soon realized what they meant. The two sisters didn’t know their numbers. If someone asked, “Do you have any nines?” they would answer yes or no at random. They really couldn’t play, because they’ve never been to school.

We were in the aldea of Terrero Colorado. James and I roll into “Terrero” every Tuesday morning, and into another aldea, Los Izotes, every Friday. It takes us 30 minutes on ugly dirt roads to get to the first, and a full hour to get to the second. The towns are small – about 300 people. They have no electricity. Some houses have running water that comes to a valve outside. The vistas are gorgeous – green mountains swooping up to meet a bright blue sky.

James and I have worked on getting to know people and building community. We typically spend our mornings playing with the kids who swarm around as our truck pulls in. Later on we visit houses – just spending time with people, in the Passionist spirit of accompaniment. In the afternoons we run a youth group and an adult group that helps us plan activities..

We are also working on some projects for the future. The two biggest needs that we see are health care and education. We plan to bring doctors in for free consultations and to offer public health education. We’ve set up a scholarship fund so that some of the kids will go to secondary school.

And we’ve hoping to get school supplies donated from Talanga, so that kids too poor to get to primary school won’t have, for example, uniforms as an obstacle. That way, everyone could play Go Fish.