Give Hope 2 Kids Blog

Using Education to Broaden Horizons

School has been back in session in Honduras for about a month now.  This makes life quite a bit busier around here.  It's been fun watching our new kids head off to the village school in their little uniforms.  So far, they've done really well with their schoolwork and have made a bunch of new friends from the community. 

We're proud to say that we have our English classes up and running again this school year.  These classes will give a good head start for the kids who go on to high school.  Monica and Erin are our English teachers for the 3rd-6th graders at the school.  The teachers are enjoying the extra time with the kids in the community and the kids love practicing their English, so everybody is having a good time.   

Since school started for the older kids, we've started preschool for the three 4-year-olds living with us.  Twice a week Lilian, Carlitos, and Fernando all head up to the Library with their backpacks and notebooks to practice shapes, counting, and coloring.  We spend time playing outside and reading books.  This has proved to be an great way to get them excited about learning and prepared for school.

In January we started new classes as a part of our Library Program.  The most faithful Library attendees had the choice of computer classes or music lessons for our first round of these classes.  It's been so fun to see the kids get excited about this.  Most have never had the opportunity to learn an instrument before and they see the computer classes as a way to have a head start when they get to computers in high school.  One of the things we're really enjoying about these new classes, is that the teachers are local young people.  So not only are we furthering the education of our village kids, but we're also giving work to young people from our area.  

Now that we've finished the addition on the Library and reorganized everything, we've discovered a mountain of great resources to use with the kids.  Previously we had so many kids and supplies squished into such a small space, it was hard to get creative.  We're really enjoying having more room now and we know it's helping us improve our Library Program. 

It's been a great few months of launching new educational programs.  We see that this is such a great way to broaden the horizons of the kids in our area and we're excited to see where a love of learning will take them in life.

Friday Youth Night

We just wanted to share a quick photo and show you how great things are going with our Kids/Youth Ministry.  We're up and running on Friday nights now and the community is loving it.  The attendance and participation has blown us away.  Our goal is not to be just another village church, but to teach people about God's love and be a unifying force for people, instead of a dividing one.  We're so encouraged with how well this going.

Celebrating Five Years of Ministry

We are celebrating five years of ministry!  God has blessed us with a very productive season and we are thrilled as we look back and see how far we've come in our quest to care for children who desperately need help.  

To celebrate these years we put together a memory book summarizing the time.  These pictures show how we prepared to, and now are caring for abadoned children, and how we've reached out to our community.  Click on this link, choose to make it full-screen from the bottom right hand corner, and enjoy watching a ministry be born!

http://www.blurb.com/books/2356454

Please feel free to share your comments with us

and share the link on your facebook page!

 

Life-Changing Agriculture

Last week we enjoyed hosting Dr. Grace Miller and some of her students from Indiana Wesleyan University taking a Sustainable Tropical Agriculture course.  While they were here we asked some of the kids from our village if they would like to come and learn how to graft trees.  It was neat to see their interest and how quickly they grasped the grafting techniques.  

We also pulled out another frame of honey from one of our beehives and gave out samples to everyone there.  The comb was more than an inch thick and dripping with delicious honey.

It is so neat to see kids get excited about projects like these ones.  You can see the light come on in their heads as they realize what a difference such projects can make to their lives.  

Simple things like this can help people get out of poverty.  Grafting is a very simple procedure to learn and it's what makes trees consistently produce good fruit, yet almost no one in our area has grafted fruit trees.  Beehives are a project that require little start-up cost compared to the revenue it can produce for a family, yet they are very rare in our region.  We are excited to be teaching young people about these agricultural opportunities, as they are often the ones willing to try something new.  This is just a small step forward in offering our neighbors better agricultural technology and techniques.

Launching a Children's Ministry

You may remember that last year we built the Activity Center.  One of our main reasons was to create a space for our future Children's Ministry.  We've lived in Urraco for the past three years.  As we've taught classes, opened the Library to the community, and simply developed friendships with people, we've seen those relationships deepen and grow in trust.  One fantastic example of this, is that at our recent community movie and game night we had more than one hundred and ten people come and participate, from our village of five hundred!  

We feel it is the right time to invite our friends to know the God that we love and serve.  Right now we're working on getting together a leadership team to prepare solid teaching and worship.  David Martinez, who many of you have met, is going to be in charge of the teaching times.  José Rito (who Sarah talked about in a recent blog) will be working with the worship team.  We plan to launch this Children's Ministry soon.  Please pray that God will use our lives to make an eternal difference in the lives of these young people. 

Investing in Students

During our time living and working in Honduras we've seen how much education changes lives for the better.  Without education, people have few options in life and often end up trapped in poverty.  There are almost no jobs where we live and if people move to the city without resources they often end up in the roughest neighborhoods with drugs and gangs.  But education changes things.  We know kids that are in medical school that come from families where the parents only went part way through grade school.    We really believe that education means more options and opportunity for a better life.

One of the main ways that we help students is by giving them work.  Every year we give at least a dozen kids part-time work so they can cover the expenses of studying at Instituto El Rey (the school where we volunteered for a year-and-a-half).  We have about six students that work year round for us, helping with the library, construction projects, and property maintenance.

Ronald is a student that's lived with us for close to a year-and-a-half now.  As an older student (he's a 23-year-old 12th grader) he's had to fight to stay in school.  When he lived with his family, they expected him to be up at 4am to help with the cattle and then he worked for us after school to pay for all his school and living expenses.  Ronald was thinking of dropping out of school until we offered him a place to live.  He still works after school, but now he has the time he needs to study and he's looking forward to graduating from high school this November.

When we started our library program a year-and-a-half ago,  Alma was asked to help.  She has grown into running the day-to-day program and has discovered that she is a natural teacher.  We've enjoyed seeing her grow in confidence and ability as she works with the kids. 

 

 

Many of you remember Ruby and her five younger sisters that we've helped through the years.  While we're not as involved with all six girls as we used to be, we still try to spend time with them and encourage their studies.  When the new school year started in February, we outfitted them all with the new uniforms and school supplies they needed.  We're amazed at how much they've grown up since we've known them.  The youngest, Abi, was only two when we started helping them and now she's in 2nd grade!

We still spend quite a bit of time with Ruby and Roxana, the oldest two from this family.  Last year Ruby lived up at our place for much of the school year.  She and Roxana still come and stay over often.  They work in the library and do other projects to help pay for school expenses and practice their English with us.  In this photo, Roxana is in her school uniform (she's now in 10th grade) and Ruby is dressed to head out to her internship.

This week Ruby, Alma, and Ronald are all down in La Ceiba, starting their 12th grade internship.  In Honduras, students are required to do a month long internship as a part of their last year of school.  For all their work in the library, we are providing Ruby and Alma with a place to stay for this month.  We are certain that this experience of living and working in the city will help prepare them for their transition to university studies next year. 

Another student that we're investing in is José.  José is in 11th grade at Instituto El Rey this year.  He is a kid with a great heart and an amazing musical ability.  With very little help, he's taught himself guitar, piano, and trumpet and he now helps with the music at three churches and his school every week.  He often comes over to our place to hang out and practice on our piano.  Jason is starting to teach him to edit music and video on the computer and I (Sarah) ended up giving him an impromptu voice lesson last week. 

As we look towards the future with these young people we are excited about helping them fulfill their dreams.  Next year we'd like to send José to La Ceiba every week for music lessons from the biggest name group in Spanish praise and worship.  Ruby will be off to university next year and Give Hope 2 Kids has committed to give her a scholarship for her first couple of years.  We hope that in the future we can provide scholarships to more students.  This is just the first wave of kids heading out into the wider world that Give Hope 2 Kids has touched.  Behind these are kids like Lincy and Edil, who are being trained as our new library assistants.  We are passionate about continuing to invest in the education of young lives, to give them a future with greater possibilities.  We want to say our thanks to so many of you who enable us to be a blessing to these young people.

REWIND 2010: Our Year in Review

Each year we like to put together a visual summary of what we've accomplished.  This year we decided to try and put it online so that it's accessible to more people.  

2010 was incredible for us.  We finally are a Honduran nonprofit and are working directly with the Honduran Social Services to take in kids.  Most homes only have to wait a few months once they're at this stage. 

Also this year, we finished our Activity Center, bought cows, bought sheep, and bought beehives.  In our REWIND we also talk about our plans to start a Children's ministry for young people in surrounding villages.  We've got lots going on.  Thanks for helping us be here and make a difference in the lives of vulnerable young people.  Click below to visit the site. 

 REWIND 2010: Our Year in Review 

 

Agriculture Update

We have been busy with our agricultural projects lately.  We've taken a break from construction to focus on this aspect of our place.  For one of these projects we are now preparing a new field for an avocado and lemon orchard.  Just the other day we drove out to a nursery and filled our truck with 150 avocado seedlings.  We hope that this will help provide a good source of income in the years ahead.

Getting sheep is one of our big goals for the next few weeks.  We've been fencing in part of our mahogany fields for their grazing and building thatched structures for shelter.  This fence has been a BIG project that's taken a lot more time and resources than we foresaw.  We are excited though to go and find the first sheep to purchase. 

      

In the next month we are also hoping to put up a chicken coop and start a flock of chickens for eggs, as well as getting our first beehives.  Dialogue Church was kind enough to donate money for beehives in the spring.  So far though, we have been unable to coordinate a time where we can travel to buy the beehives in a different part of Honduras and be able to get an expert to come teach us what we need to know. 

We've also been working on putting up our new greenhouse.  The goal is for this building to be a training center as well as place to start young plants.  Right now the structure is up and we're ready to attach the shade cloth.  We've already started a training program though, even without the finished facilities.  A couple of our fall volunteers are doing an agricultural training program for a group of graduating 6th graders from our elementary school.  We're trying to plant seeds of change in these young minds, teaching them about erosion prevention, crop diversification, and other important topics.  Unfortunately with the way the soil is deteriorating in our area, the next generation will not be able to support their families by just growing beans and corn.  We hope that by teaching the kids that we can help our area move into a successful future in agriculture.

Attending the Project Honduras Conference

In the middle of October we attended the Project Honduras Conference.  This is an annual conference to bring together those who are working for a better Honduras.  It's a great place to gain a broader view of the work being done in here, to connect with others working in Honduras, and to share ideas and resources.

Jason presented for a few minutes about Give Hope 2 Kids and the work that we're doing.  We talked about all the various things that we're working on, as there aren't very many ministries that work on their own project, in their community, and with agriculture to support themselves.  We especially emphasized the idea of bringing volunteers to work inside the public elementary schools, as this has been an effective tool at building community relationships and benefiting the local kids.  We are proud of all that we have accomplished -- with God's grace -- in the past few years.

 
The President of Honduras, President Lobo also came to the event.  He came for a few hours to listen to some of the presentations and ideas of the aid workers and to share some of his own thoughts.  What an honor!

Thanks to the Group from Life Church

 
We just enjoyed having a group come from Life Church with Jason's Dad, Paul Furrow.  The big project for their trip was to get the new roofs up on two buildings at our elementary school.  In preparation, men from our village pulled off the old roof and took down a few trees.  Then our Honduran work crew built the rafters and prepared the buildings for the new roofs.  When the group arrived we were amazed that they got both roofs up in just over a day of work.  With another few days of work they put in all new wiring into the assembly hall and the kindergarten, both for lights and for a little computer lab (that we hope to put in as an upcoming project).

Then the group came back to our place to do some finishing work on our Activity Center.  They wired the building and put the lights up.  Then much to the kid's delight, they built soccer goals for our little indoor field.

  
 
We really appreciated the time we got to spend with this group and the friendships we formed.  Thanks for all your hard work group!