Visit with the Organizations MCC Honduras Supports

Tegucigalpa from our Hostel

Tegucigalpa

Our SALT/YEMEN Group

Tegucigalpa Mennonite Church

Last week as part of the SALT and YAMEN orientation we traveled to various parts of the country to visit several of the organizations that we support in this country. I was fortunate enough to go along and to meet our partner organizations and to experience some of there work.

We traveled two hours to Siguatepeque where MCC supports a Christian organization with a project creating and supporting initiatives to allow for victims to declare when there is domestic violence. In a country where Machismo is very strong and where sexual violence is common, there are so many barriers to people coming forward.  We witnessed how the organization advocates for the rights of people, builds accountability and transparency in community and government structures, offices, police force and schools, and makes sure people are aware of their rights when victims and how they can access resources.

Tilapia Fish Tanks

Seedlings Fertilized by Tilapia Poop

Kara's host mom

We then traveled to Tegucigalpa where we visited a children’s school where one of our SALTers, Kara, will be placed. We heard from the daughter of the founders who had encouraged her parents to do something about the children of trash collectors in the city dump. It is an amazing story of how they have built this school and day center for kids to come during the day where it is safe and where they have the opportunity to learn. They are wanting to expand to include technical training so they have options to leave the life of a trash collector since many generations just cycle back to the same life. We saw tilapia raising tanks and vegetable production which is an experiment in income generation and teaching resource for children. We saw the multiple buildings with names of the churches who had built them in the ‘brigadas’ (brigades), their name for short term mission groups that come to Honduras.

Keyla's Host Family

View from their home in mountains outside of Teguc

Water Storage Tanks: they get water once a month on city system

We also visited a larger organization in central Teguc where our YAMENer will be working. They are working for justice for the ‘least of these’ in education, health and government systems. For many poor the systems do not work, they are corrupt and they don’t have access, teachers do not show up for class and there is political influences and organized crime which affects their functioning. The organization we visited is concentrated in calling accountability to the government to follow the laws, to provide universal education, health and policing, and is working in the system to make it more transparent, cycle out corrupt workers and doing advocacy with parents and communities so they have a voice to demand that the government do what it is supposed to do. This is a tricky dance because we have Christian organizations that work at this in different ways and some do not agree with working so closely with what they see as a proven corrupt government and are calling for a distance from government and a change in leadership and corrupt laws. This includes a lot of partner sand churches with which we work, so it is not easy work. But there are different ways of working for the ‘least of these’ and organizations are approaching it differently.

Dam for Piped Water

Conservation Agriculture: Second Growing Season

Drying Corn

Grain for Food Storage

Finally, we visited the Brethren in Christ church (anabaptist and related to Mennonites) and their work with farmers in the south. We heard from them how climate change is affecting their lives over the last ten years. How the first or the two rainy seasons has all but disappeared and they are struggling to adapt. They are encouraging farmers in conservation agriculture, providing metal storage containers, introducing drought and disease resistant crops, constructing water capture systems (dams, piping) and organizing farmer savings groups to provide local savings and loan systems for the families and communities. What was most interesting to me was how they have to negotiate rich landowners who have control over the water that they need for household use and who own all the farmland and how vulnerable they are. It is a risk because advocating for land rights in Honduras is a death sentence since it is controlled by the rich, govt and organized crime. It is also influenced by global companies, and in their case, a Canadian gold mining company who through a govt contract (possibly illegal) has purchased the mountain and forest above their communities and whose activities would destroy the land and water from which they derive their very survival. I was amazed by the courage they have in confronting such issues in the name of Christ, the persecution they face and how they go into gang-controlled neighborhoods and plant churches everywhere they go. I was also challenged in that they have not lost the peace witness that we have in the North American church, it is front and center in their mission to be Jesus in this place.