All of our lives have been disrupted this year with pestilence, despair, and fear. Even here in the US, where we have massive economic resources and well-developed medical and emergency relief infrastructures, we have suffered from the economic, social, and emotional effects of the pandemic.
In Honduras, among the poorest countries in the world, those effects are multiplied. Honduran governmental and medical systems were not equipped to deal with a pandemic, much less the two back-to-back hurricanes that struck in November. “Honduras is facing probably the greatest catastrophe of its history,” said Carlos Madero, secretary of the Ministry of General Coordination of the Government. “We never thought and never imagined that we would have three emergencies of this magnitude in one year.”
But there is an antidote for pestilence, despair, and fear – it is HOPE! And hope still lives in
El Carrizo despite the hammering it has taken from COVID, Eta, and Iota.
In February, for the first time, children in El Carrizo attended their own community middle school – the new Sharefish school: Centro Educativo “Aprende Conmigo.” The families in El Carrizo had hoped for their own middle school for years. That hope has now been realized.
The children in El Carrizo no longer have to hitchhike to a distant community to advance beyond the sixth grade. Aprende Conmigo offers many advantages: each child has a desk and schoolbooks and access to computers, a library, musical instruments, physical education equipment, and a playground with soccer and volleyball fields.
And in spite of the pandemic, the children have still been able to do distance learning. Their schools are in walking distance. Even though there is no internet in El Carrizo, the teachers go to the schools to prepare lessons that the students pick up and return to be graded. COVID has not killed the desire for education in El Carrizo nor the hope that education offers to the children in this rural community.
Throughout 2020 the families in El Carrizo have continued to receive their sponsorship money. This has helped the families survive economically, another sign of hope. Your resources have provided this hope. Without your generous donations, these programs could not be sustained.
