Shin Fujiyama's blog

This winter will be a win-win situation for everyone. Cosmo and I are organizing women's coops at Siete de Abril to start little one month long businesses as our micro- enterprise trial phase.

The 130+ visitors are going to be spending a lot of time at the work site, digging and mixing cement. Of course, many of us are going get hungry from all that work. In August, when we built the prototype home, one neighbor's entrepreneurial skills stuck in my mind. This mother baked some bread and sent her 12-year-old son to come sell them to our group of 10 people. After we bought one and shared it and realized how good it was, we bought the whole basket.  read more »

We had an AMAZING meeting at siete yesterday full of excitement...Over 100 adults were present with several hundred kids watching from outside of the school. People were cheering and yelling out ideas the whole evening. The school seemed like it was about to burst with energy.

We talked about all the updates first; the houses will be three bed rooms instead of two, each house will have a bathroom/shower, and each family will get a slightly bigger plot of land (13m x 13m) than planned. We visited another village project in Tegucigalpa, and they had a successful program based on this design.  read more »

It was so great to visit the Universidad de San Pedro Sula with the high school girls from Copprome. Most of them had never imagined going to college just a few years ago, but now things are completely different. They all have such high hopes and aspirations to pursue education at the highest level. These visits are going to motivate the girls to excel even further in school.

I'm very excited to continue helping the girls who graduate from Copprome. They need a support system and an environment where they can focus on the right things and stay away from the distractions.

We are currently looking for a place that could possibly fit eight girls as a transitional home for the girls who want to study in college.  read more »

This weekend Cosmo, Chuck, and I went to the Copan Ruinas for the 8th Annual Project Honduras Conference. Over 230 representatives from dozens of NGOs working in Honduras came to share and exchange ideas. There was a multitude of presentations and, of course, some down time to network. We met many interesting people who have worked in orphanages, clinics, schools, with HIV awareness, microfinance, etc. They were from many different countries including Germany, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Canada, US--as well as a few local Hondurans.

We stayed at a really neat hotel called ViaVia and had a blast with our new friends. Next year, we plan to send an even bigger team from SHH and do a presentation ourselves.

In addition, we were able to gather hundreds of votes from the conference attendees and from the Project Honduras network for Razoo.com! Many thanks to everyone who voted!

Since last Monday, I knew something was wrong; everyone in the house was feeling pretty sick, mainly with stomach problems but also with nausea and headaches. I was feeling quite weak until Wednesday, but thought I had recovered by Thursday.

When I woke up Saturday the stomach ache had returned. However, my friend Mario was coming to the house to take me to go see some plots of land. It was a bad idea for me to go, but I went anyways.

The next thing I know, I was being carried into a hospital with an IV on my arm and an oxygen mask on my face. The doctors said that I had some kind of stomach infection and was severely dehydrated. After two days in the hospital I was finally well enough to walk back home. Great thing that the hospital is only 4 blocks away!

So long to street food.

It’s only been three full days since I got here in Honduras, and so much has been done. We’ve had an uplifting meeting with the mayor of El Progreso, met with three communities that need help to build schools, prepared for the inauguration of the Copprome education center, celebrated Children’s Day at Siete de Abril, and answered 120 emails, just to name a few…

On Thursday, we are going to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, to meet with government officials to finalize the land titles. The good news is, the municipality of El Progreso passed a resolution giving us permission to begin the construction.  read more »