Linaca Today

Top Five Preseason Objectives

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.

Keeping Kids in School

 Fatima and Isback understand that the need to fund our teens’ higher education is one of the biggest challenges we face today. Without us they would not be in school this year.

All those sweet little baby faces we signed up at the center four years ago are maturing and growing faster than you can imagine.

The cost for a Linacan child to go to school is prohibitive for most of our teens. Bus fare alone is over $30 a month. Add to that uniforms, matriculation, food, and books, and you understand that a $28 monthly sponsorship will not go far. Parents of these children make around $30 - $50 a month in most homes.

We have begun a higher education fund for all the teen leaders in the center who would like to continue their education. These teens volunteer with us mentoring the younger children in the center. They will also be helping us branch into surrounding communities.

Fanning the divine spark

The little boy in the picture below is oblivious to the misery around him. His adobe house is near collapse. The outdoor latrine, with its cover ripped away, is beyond repair. There is little more than a few tortillas and beans to feed his family of eight. Until that day when we brought the family blankets, he had to sleep in all the clothing he owned, which is not much, just to keep warm.

Instead of the despair most see when looking at his situation, Luis (pictured to the right) is full of joy. From a broken ladder, with sticks for a steering wheel, clutch, and gear shift, his magic bus rolls on fueled by a divine spark of creativity and the pbfffffffffffft of his lips as he motors down his imaginary road. No need for brakes, he insists, “The bus will stop when it runs out of gas!”

Over the years we have visited and worked in Linaca, we have watched children who began like Luis, end up like the shiftless young man in the picture to the right. Our hearts have broken over little girls like Flora that end up like her mother (see slide show) Illiterate. Toothless. A passel of children from different fathers. Carrying a load of wood instead of books and homework.

The divine spark we see in the above, their innocence, hope, and creativity, if not nurtured will be snuffed out.  They were condemned to life in the fields, picking beans, for a couple of dollars a day or hunting for wood. Mothers, in most families, cannot work as they are too consumed with raising babies, one after hopeless one.

see slide show...

Crime and Drugs in Linaca

These two teens were held at knife points and robbed of all their school supplies.

In our January update we told you about the drug problem that has manifested in a dramatic way over the past year in the sleepy little village of Linaca.

Our teens tell us that they have all been offered drugs recently. 

Each day at our center our teens gather together with center mentors for a teaching and interactive talk on values, morality, and spiritual guidance. Well over 50 teens are active participants in these discussions during the course of the week. 

Soon, at the request of the public schools, these teens will be taking what they have learned to the elementary school. Instructing the younger children about the dangers of drugs, sex, and consequences of dropping out of school will be the focus of their discussions. 

While Honduras is a very dangerous place over all, Linaca has not been affected much by serious crime. However that changed last Sunday. Two of our teen leaders, Tavo and Oscar were waiting for a bus at 8:30 in the morning. Suddenly grabbed from behind, they felt sharp knives poised at their jugular veins. Young thieves looking for drug money, threatened their lives demanding everything they had, down to their new school backpacks and shoes. 

A generous benefactor recently outfitted Oscar for school providing him with tuition, bus money, and new clothes and supplies for the school year. Tavo’s supplies were donated from our center’s Poorest of the Poor Fund. A fund we use for special needs of any of our students. If you wish to donate to this fund, know that this, as all donations to the center will be applied 100% to the children’s needs.