Construction

http://www.cdcki.org/events/Helping_Hands.htm

Helping Hands is a compilation of stories written by children about the joys of helping others. Each story shows how a little love and kindness can go a long way. The cost of the book if ordered through CDCKI is $15.00 (USD).

The book will be distributed in Spring 2008 and everyone who reserves a book will be contacted when the book is ready about making payment. All profits from Helping Hands will go towards the San Francisco de Opalaca Library in Honduras. The goal is to raise $10,000 which will be enough to physically build and fully furnish
the library.

This municipality in the department of Intibucá, Honduras, currently has a 90% illiteracy rate among children and adults. This can be attributed to the fact that the underdeveloped town has a limited number of schools, with none going higher than the ninth grade, and has never had a library.  read more »

A group of six alumnae from the University of Mary Washington traveled to El Progreso for a week to continue their support of SHH and survey the projects that are underway. Five of the six were on the first trip to Nuestras Pequeñas Rosas in 2004 and all seven were participants in SHH while students at UMW. During the week they visited the nutrition center and Copprome orphanage, worked at La Villa Soleada, visited the Siete de Abril community and accompanied Cosmo Fujiyama as she presented the land deed for the Por Venir School. "I am so thankful to have had this week here and I feel reinvigorated to keep supporting SHH and to find even more ways to contribute. It’s remarkable how much has happened in the months since Shin and Cosmo moved here." --Kelly Ryan '06

In order to begin construction of the new schoolhouse for Por Venir, SHH needed to confirm that the land title was indeed in the name of the school. This provided a guarantee that the land was indeed secured and safe to build on. Eager to get the project started, the parents of the Por Venir and surrounding communities gathered the necessary funds to pay off the unpaid land mortgage by holding raffles, soccer games and door-to-door collections. With the legal assistance of Mrs. Leslie Amaya, SHH's in-country lawyer, the parents of Por Venir school were able to secure the necessary legal documents for the Por Venir school. The land title was successfully handed over to Por Venir school on Feburary 1, 2008. SHH and the parents of the school broke ground at Por Venir the following Monday.

Don Marco, president of the parent's association, with the land title.

Over 125 students participated in service learning trips to El Progreso, Honduras between December 15, 2007 and January 13, 2008. In addition to several graduate students, alumni, and working professionals, volunteers represented 13 different colleges: the University of Mary Washington, the College of William and Mary, the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, Virginia Tech, the College of Westminster, the University of Richmond, Boston College, Barnard College, Hollins University, the University of Massachusetts, Western Illinois University, and Rutgers University. Volunteers spent between one and four weeks in the country.  read more »

Razoo.com, a social networking site that unites those who want to make a positive difference in the world, awarded its top prize of $10,000 to SHH in its Change Your World contest on October 15, 2007. The contest, which started on October 2, 2007, gave Razoo members the opportunity to cast votes for various nonprofit organizations.

Money from the contest will be used to construct three new classrooms at Por Venir Elementary School, which must cancel classes during rain due to poor roofing conditions and hold middle school classes at night due to overcrowding. A portion of the money will also be used to purchase seeds for a community in the northeastern part of Honduras called La Mosquitia, whose crops were destroyed by Hurricane Felix in early September 2007.

On December 17, 2007, over one hundred villagers and SHH volunteers gathered to break ground on a major housing project that will benefit families from the impoverished village of Siete de Abril. Villa Soleada (Sunshine Village), named after Doris Buffet's Sunshine Lady Foundation, came into being after a joint decision by the community of Siete and the SHH Board of Directors in early November, which voted together to move the village rather than continue to contest ownership of the land Siete de Abril currently occupies.  read more »

On December 7th, SHH finished opening up roads inside and leading to Villa Soleada. The mayor of El Progreso, Alexander Lopez, sent bulldozers and other heavy machinery to clear the way. Meanwhile, families from Siete de Abril moved an approximately 80-foot high pile of rocks and gravel onto low-lying spots of the road with their both hands and shovels. With roads now in place, anyone who wants to visit Villa Soleada has access to our project.

On Sunday, October 27, Students Helping Honduras took a large step forward in its effort to provide more than seventy homes to the villagers at Siete de Abril in El Progreso, Honduras.

For the past several months, SHH has been working hard with Honduran lawyers and government officials to obtain land titles for the families living at Siete de Abril. Although nearly half of the land in Honduras is currently untitled, SHH felt very strongly that this was a critical precursor to any building project—for which security and sustainability are primary goals. Ultimately, this process was complicated by the villagers’ uncertain right of ownership, a fact disputed by several external parties. The resulting legal processes to obtain village ownership of this land may have taken between one and five years to realize, if possible at all.  read more »

How many college students does it take to build a home? During SHH’s most recent trip to El Progreso this August, group members found out first hand. The house, located in a small community called Las Brisas, only a couple of minutes from Copprome, was built in the names of the five children of widower Don Chepe. Gerson, Juan, Alejandro, Luis, and Wendy have lived at Copprome since their mother's death from illness.

The 17’ x 25’ home consists of 3 rooms: a living room, one room for the boys to share, and, at Don Chepe's insistence, one room just for Wendy. SHH members, alongside Don Chepe himself, a small team of masons, and with much help from neighbors, dug trenches, cut rebar, mixed cement and mortar, and laid cinder blocks.  read more »

In June of 2007, construction was completed for the Sunshine Education Center at the Copprome orphanage. The education center includes a small library, computer lab, study room, art room, music room, and meditation room. The building will be a place for the kids to study, a center for after-school activities, and can be used to house child-led craft projects to raise money.  read more »