Village Updates Fall 2012

The Givers and The Takers

"Are you ready for the bad news?" Jose asked me on the phone recently. "Never." I said. While we have a lot more good news than bad with our kids, the bad news always knocks us for a loop. "Rosmari was taken." "Taken" is a common term in Honduras - perfectly understood and even acceptable to most in the villages. It meant that a precious girl that we have known for over ten years, and now even at 15 she is far more a child than a young woman, had been taken from her home to live with another young man, who is also more child than adult. He has little prospect of a future, beyond picking beans. He reminds us of one of the young boys we first met in Linaca. One day at our center we asked the children what their aspirations were for the future. One boy wrote that he wanted to get a job and then get two or three women. It was what he observed all around him. These kinds of men were his role model and ideal. And to this kind of thinking, we lost one of our precious young girls - with her parents blessing. When we expressed horror about what happened to Rosmari, some of our young people protested. "But she's married!" "Let's get this clear! Jose told them. First of all they are not married in the eyes of God or under the laws of Honduras. From now on we are going to start using the proper term for what everyone here seems to accept as normal. Taken means these men dont respect the women enough to marry them and most often will leave them as soon as they get pregnant." Rosmari is the youngest of the girls from our center that has been taken recently. The other was 20. I refer to The Takers as The Honduran Taliban, or The HT. No, they don't single out girls on school buses to shoot in the head, as in the case of that incredibly brave Pakistani child Malala. Nor do they burn down schools. But they do take them out of school. All too soon they are barefoot, pregnant, and single again. Some will go away to have their children where no one knows them. These young girls often give the child to an orphanage, but most will remain in the village as single moms. Some will go to work while the grandmother who raised them is now in charge of their newborn infant. We have known quite a few of these types of girls. Most were in our center for a very short time and had no interest in school, so they dropped out. The next thing we heard, they had been taken by an HT and were pregnant. Many came back to us after being abandoned, expressing the fact that they wished they had listened. Their children will soon be a part of our center. We can only hope and pray these kids will have mothers that insist they stay in school. Most of The Takers are not teens, but much older men. The one who took the other girl from our center, left a girl in the village pregnant, and yet another with very young twins. This is not an unusual pattern. The vast majority of the HT never acknowledge their children, much less provide financial or emotional support for those they abandon. When we first came to Linaca I would ask the children who they lived with. Most would say with a grandparent or mom. When inquiring about their fathers the most common response was, He abandoned us. The tone in their voices broke my heart. Today, those children are in their teens and I watch them cry, boys and girls alike, devastated that their own fathers have no love for them, regarding them as mistakes at best, nonentities at worst. While it may be the norm in the villages, the pain is profound for all who experience it. According to a recent study by Casa Alianza, out of every 100 adolescent girls in Honduras today, a minimum of 22% of them are pregnant. The survey said the majority of these girls are 13 years old and under! A few years ago this same study found the majority of Honduran pregnant teens were between the ages of 15-17 years old. Barring a miracle, our little Rosmari will be added to this sad statistic. Her demise began recently after she quit school without our knowledge. She was flunking out and ashamed. It had nothing to do with her intelligence. The child is as bright, as anyone we have in our center. She is a star athlete, a leader, and avidly soaked up everything we taught her. She loved learning English and showed an aptitude for language. But Rosmari had a bad environment in the home. Instead of encouraging her to get the academic help she needed, her parents forced her to drop out when she started failing. We learned this after it was too late to redeem the school year. Often children like Rosmari think the problem lies with them. They think they are stupid when it is their own parents, the teachers, and the social disorder of the village that has failed them. Rosmari happens to be one of the few children who attend our center with a father and mother living in the home. But they are far from the ideal parents most of us grew up with... Her parents took her out of school for a year when she was 11 so that she could babysit her younger siblings. We had great difficulty getting Rosmari back in the school at that time. After discovering she had dropped out of school this time we had another long discussion with her family. We all agreed

she would return to school the next term. Days after this agreement, Rosmari was "taken" by the young HT. While we have infinitely more success stories than stories like the two young girls that were recently taken, these were a first for us and ones that we dont want to repeat. The educational system in Honduras is failing. Many of the children who attend our center are functionally illiterate. Few have any critical thinking skills. The ones that do are ones that have been with us for at least a few years. The children who attend our center spend a couple of hours a day, four or five days a week with us. While we have made significant inroads in changing some aspects of the local culture and the way these kids think and act, ten hours a week is simply not enough. At night our many of our kids go home to dysfunctional families and bad influences in their neighborhoods. Most parents or guardians do not have the intellectual, or any other kind of tool, to train children to be the upstanding citizens and leaders that could effect real change in Honduras. When our work began the center was comprised of mostly elementary school children. Little ones do not pose much of a threat to those that set the cultural norms for the underbelly of Linaca. However, as they grow and remain under our influence, the darker elements of the village are deprived of fresh meat to buy into their lifestyles of debauchery. This is costly to them both in terms of finances and pleasures. Our youth are not buying their drugs and alcohol, not attending their decadent parties, and are not easy prey for their sexual appetites. Because of this we have made some real enemies in Honduras. There is a very depraved element of society in the villages. But we must point out the striking contrast between these negative influences and the decent parents and good leaders in the village that are also on the rise, even if outnumbered In 2003 there was a very low percentage of villagers who actually valued education. These were not bad people. They were merely ignorant. Most had not gone past the 3rd or 4th Grade and did not see a reason their children should stay in school or attend our center when they could be working and contributing to the home. How times have changed in that respect. Each month we fill a large room with parents who realize the benefits their children receive. They are now the strongest advocates for our center and for their children remaining in school, even at great personal sacrifice. Our December 2011 newsletter outlined this cost. Over the course of their middle and high school years one young person's total contributions to a Honduran household would be the U.S. equivalent of over $70,000 in six years! A year ago our newsletter featured a young girl from Linaca, who at the age of 11 was essentially sold into slavery by her grandparents. Now that many of our kids access the internet, we will call her Rixy in order to maintain her privacy. Once Rixy escaped from her captivity and got back into school and our center she began to flourish. Today, at 16 years old, Rixy is probably the most gifted student we have. But she also comes from a home where she is unloved; neither of her parents will acknowledge her existence. She lives with her grandparents, who at best, ignore her. Of late, we have been close to losing Rixy to the HT. Recently, she started missing days at the center. We always investigate absences of our

students and we learned that she has been spending her time with a 21 year old woman in the village who has a very bad reputation. Rixy is an exceptional young lady standing on the edge of an abyss, poised to trade a bright future for the dead end seaminess of village life. Twice we have succeeded in winning Rixy back. But there is no one else in her life to insist she stay on course. Recently Rixy got a big wake up call to consequences of bad choices. This time, it happened to her cousin. Only steps from Rixys door, her cousin suffered a fate that no one in Linaca could ever imagine possible. Rixys cousin was also "taken" by an HT. She had a young baby. The couple stayed together after the birth of the child, but the union was far from happy. The man was an alcohol/drug addict. Last week he came home in a drugged and angry rage. They argued because she did not prepare what he wanted for dinner. She nagged him about the equivalent of $1.50 that he owed her. These beyond trivial matters were enough to send this man over the edge. He cut off her head with his machete. Another orphan is created in Linaca. We have ringside seats to the unraveling of a culture. Jose and I used to drive through the village and people would wave at us, calling out our names. Now, more often than not, we are met with souless, icy stares of the men in the village. They literally make me shudder. We need our own schools so that we can train our kids to be good leaders. They must learn critical thinking skills, how to read, write, and speak other languages. We need them 8 hours a day, minimum, and safe houses for those at risk. We have the solutions for the problems that girls like Rosmari and Rixy face. What we lack are the resources to keep these children under our tutelage more than 10 hours a week. We are praying for the day when we will have the funding for the training centers we need to take these kids to the next level. We thank our family and friends who believe in what these kids are capable of and are helping the dream come true.

WE NOW HAVE TWO MATCHING GRANTS

A generous partner has put up $25,000 as a matching grant! So far we have collected $6,000 toward our goal. Every dollar we can match is greatly needed this time. We have a growing population of our Road Scholars in the Linaca and Jamastran Valleys. On average it costs us $50 a month to scholarship a student. This covcrs the bus, uniforms, books, and miscellaneous charges for internships and special events that the High Schools require. More than 175 students volunteer with our team a minimum of ten hours per week.These Road Scholars tutor the younger children at our centers and are hands on help for any need arising in the community. Our second match grant is $10,000 for a bus for the Road Scholars of Jamastran. Several years ago we were able to purchase a bus for the students of Linaca to get them to High School. This was a game changer for us and significantly benefitted our children. A bus in Jamastran will allow us to get even more Road Scholars in our center and will be far more economical and dependable in the long run. Please write Matching Grant or Bus on the memo line of your check. All undesignated giving will go where our board deems the need is greatest.

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