Well-Being For All

Education Is The Key - (Part 6 from Honduras)

Rural Reconstruction Program, La Buena Fe, Honduras: Aug. 21, 2006

The World Accord Central America Program in Honduras has contained Adult Literacy as part of its Education Program since its inception more than 20 years ago. Several of the current Program Staff were illiterate until their adult education began with PRR’s night time home study.

The PRR Education Program, supported by World Accord, continues to offer the freedom of literacy to adults. It has also expanded to include 46 scholarships mainly to help girls go to High School or ‘Colegio’. Scholarships are awarded according to need for students who demonstrate aptitude and work hard. For many, it is simply to provide tuition and bus fare for students to get from their remote villages to the new Colegio at Horconcitos, near the PRR office.

The volunteer work of Leonard and Lottie Brown provides a mobile library of books for children in area schools. Why learn to read if there is nothing to read? This project has provided dozens of area schools with books that are regularly changed. Leonard and Lottie have also set up, and maintained, a teacher resource centre at the PRR office. There is a computer, coloured paper, stencils, a paper cutter, art supplies, etc. and a teacher volunteer mans the centre every Saturday.

Construction Expeditions lead by Volunteers Al Wigood, Jens Schoenrank and organized by Richard Kirsh support the education needs of communities by helping them construct Elementary and Kinder Schools. Once a community builds a school, the government will staff it with a teacher. A Kinder is for all the children but it will impact future generations of girls. The older girls of the family are no longer pulled from school to care for their younger siblings. It will only be a few more years before there are more equal numbers of girls in higher education.

Access to Education is probably the single most significant component to improving the rights of women. Many will still choose life in their village area but Education will offer them a choice they didn’t have before. I did not truly value my right to access any level of education I chose, until I met tens of thousands of people who simply never have that choice.

Terry Fielder

posted by World Accord Staff @ 12:09 PM