Honduras 05/09

Last week's visit to Honduras went very well. The weather was hot and humid and I spent most of the week in a truck with no AC. You know its hot when the windows are down and it feels like someone is blowing hot air from a sauna in your face. Besides being hot, all this time in the truck with the windows down resulted in some interesting hair days. :)

Even little girls in orphanges in Honduras love Hannah Montana!!

The trip started with an AOH directors meeting with all of the directors of the 15 homes currently involved in the program and the 5 homes that are soon to be entering into the program officially. We discussed the children's letter writing, pictures, updating rosters, AOH drawing contest 2009, Computer Lab Installations, and a future project to assist them in their costs associated with the children's education. The homes were excited to hear about our project to provide and install computer labs. We answered a lot of questions and set a date for them to submit the necessary information.

Beds donated to the homes by the Angels of Hope Program

I also had the opportunity to go and visit some of the new homes that we are now entering in the program. As a rule, we try to "court" a home for a minimum of three months before involving them in the AOH program. This way we can ensure that our structure is set in place for providing goods and other support to the home before we start to formally involve them in the program. So far all five of the new homes have been receiving distributed goods and food items without any problems, so we are moving forward to enter their children into the sponsorship aspect of the program.

The homes that I visited were wonderful. They are very well managed homes full of happy, healthy children. As soon as you walk on to the property of a well-run home you can feel it in the environment. Dispite a lack in resources, the homes are clean and orderly while the children are warm, affectionate, and well-behaved. We evaluated some of the new homes for potential future projects in agriculture and animal husbandry as some of them are privledged to have large parcels of land to take advantage of. On this same note, our itinerary included a couple stops to visit project sites in a couple of the homes. We are currently completing two seperate chicken farms in the homes and starting on a vegetable garden in another. The chicken farms will have the capacity for 400 broiler chickens and 200 layer hens. Not only is the physical project provided, but the homes and children are given the technical training to maintain the husbandry projects.

Chicken Farm Project that is nearly finished. Once the training is completed the remainder of the chickens and hens will be purchased.

By the end of the week, we had collected lots of information and evaluations. I came home with a briefcase full of paperwork, a couple plaques of recognition that were presented to FFP, and a backache from bumping along the dirt roads all week.