Potential Focus and Projects Discussion

Today in class the main focus was our class project/partner discussion. Our goal was to make this decision before Christmas Break, and this was our final class to do so. First, our class discussion focused on Casey Morrison’s video that she shared with us ”Awaken Honduras”. This film discussed an organization trying to help get groups of kids outside Tegucigalpa who work on a garbage dump (“Dumpster Children”) into schools. These children live in dangerous, horrific conditions (ex: fires, build houses out of trash, horrible breathing atmosphere). Life as dumpster children is all they know, all they have, but school and education can give them something to look forward to. This video was brought into discussion because it is another option for a focus and or partner in Honduras, and if we can pair it with another one of our partner’s that we have in mind.

After this discussion faded, we began discussing each of our opinions on what our focus should be. Discussion on education, water, and gangs is found below:

Education:

If we focus on education, could we sponsor a scholarship for a Honduran student to come to Elon or a Honduran University? “Periclean Scholar Scholarship”, is this possible? May be too expensive, however alumni will most likely help a lot.

Sustainable Farming:

We could potentially pair this issue/topic with education by combining Hope for Honduran Children/ Honduran Universities and Cargill. We could use education to teach about sustainable farming both in the classroom and hands on. The only concern is that we would need to choose a focus region if we were to implement this idea.

Gangs: 

Professor at Yale’s presentation about how cartels in Mexico is a giant business, the violence is due to the fact that it is a business and they’re protecting their results. There are people who are in support of Gang activities because they create business, so maybe if we provide an alternative, the gangs will lose this support.

Next we discussed/wrote on the board potential focus names. The names on the board included:

1. Youth Development and Education

2. Child Empowerment

3. Educating Impoverished Children

4. Water and microfinance

5. Improving Quality of Life

6. Community Development

Next to these potential names, we wrote our potential partners:

1. Dump/AFE

2. Hogares Sanos

3. For Azul

4. Hope for Honduran Children

5. Cargill

6. Honduran Universities

7. Students for Helping Honduras

After we had these two important factors organized and stated on the board, we went around and discussed each of our concerns about the process of choosing our partner/focus and whether or not all of these focuses/ partners are realistic within our 3 year time. A very common opinion about these focuses/partners is that we should try and combine all of our interests into education, just like we said we could with sustainable farming. Another idea was that we should first choose a community, and then choose our focus based on what that community needs. Other concerns included whether or not we could accomplish our goals if we didn’t travel to Honduras and how we could keep our education program sustainable (teacher’s salaries?)

After this discussion, we put wrote down what we wanted to cover next semester and filled out teacher evaluations.

Though we did not reach our goal in choosing our exact focus/partner, we made big progress. We also discussed that as of right now, we are comfortable supporting a few, such as Hope for Honduran Children, and therefore will continue selling their bracelets and supporting them.

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