This week begins the countdown for the news school year all over Honduras. Our efforts flow with the calendar year. From February through November, we follow the movements of over seven hundred children in Linaca alone. Their joys and sorrows, agonies and victories become our team’s primary concern. We have spent the last week preparing and organizing ourselves to launch this critical phase of our work. Here are the top five activities that we must accomplish this week.
Number five: Make sure that every child that wants to go to school is matriculated. Often times for the absence of a few dollars a month, a parent will decide that their child will stay home—sealing their fate to becoming permanent members in the Honduran underclass of poverty. We have rescued over a dozen teenagers from this fate this year. Most of them are brilliant young men and women whose gifts would have been wasted in the bean and coffee fields.
Number four: Recruit the local school teachers to send the kids to the center as part of their day to day curriculum. Last year over half of our children’s attendance was the result of a handful of teachers’ active participation. The directors of both schools in Linaca are very supportive. With our increased staff we will invest in the education of those teachers that were not on board last year. The testimony of those teachers who did participate in the program is our greatest asset.
Number three: Motivate the parents to keep their kids in the school system. The same pressures that tempt parents to pull their kids from the public school earlier in the year are just as pressing through the year. A child is worth about two dollars and fifty cents a day as a day laborer. That is a lot of money for the abject poor when you consider that there are over four to five children of working age in each home. A kid in school is not only a draw on the budget it is also a hit on the income stream of the poorest of the poor.
Number two: Motivate the children themselves to stay in school. The heart our work is to inspire young men and women to rise above the framework of the destructive culture of poverty to which their parents have been chained for generations. This is by far our most difficult task. This new vision is not won by new latrine or water projects—it is won by the hard work of mentoring one life at a time. Our staff takes this “school pre season” as an opportunity to build momentum in this area by identifying a recruiting the teen leaders who will serve as peer counselors of the rest of the community of youth.
Number One: Keep ourselves motivated to serve the poor not of necessity but of a duty born out of love. This is the only way we can be assured that we will last the whole year with all of the attendant pressures and challenges that come our way. Most of the people with whom we come n contact that help the poor do so while they feel rewarded by the impact of their contributions. Few persevere beyond the thanklessness and indignity that the culture of poverty can subject its rescuers. So we check to keep our attitude of unconditional love alive all the time.
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