Trips

SHH pulled off yet another successful fundraiser this summer, this time bringing together over one hundred and sixty people onto the same dance floor for an all-out Zumbathon. Men and women both young and old all crowded together and danced to the loud Latin rhythms, literally for hours. By the end of the day the dancers had raised over $1,600 plus earnings from the new coffee bag initiative. All those proceeds will benefit the continued housing construction effort in Villa Soleada this August.

The first summer interns of Students Helping Honduras have just reached the midpoint of their two-month internship. They are making the long-term goals of SHH possible by devoting their summers to developing projects that will continue after their stay in Honduras. Daniel Saboe (UVA) is researching water distribution systems that will meet needs of Villa Soleada and Las Brisas. Rachel Mason (UMW) and Megan Coolidge (WM) are working with the women of Villa Soleada and Siete de Abril as a part of the microfinance program. Gaku Fujiyama (VT), Taylor Hall (UMW), and Amanda Potter (WM) are working at Copprome in the Sunshine Education Center and are developing reports on the local schools, the surrounding universities, and the orphanages of Honduras. Check out their blog for a peek into their experiences.

From June 4th to August 1st, six SHH interns will be living and working in El Progreso, Honduras to implement various projects to expand the strength and service of SHH within the community. For the application process, interns were asked to develop their own project proposal, based on their skill sets and interest and provide an explanation of how they would implement the project.

Some of the projects that will addressed by the interns include the following: Microfinance in Villa Soleada, Bilingual education at Copprome, water and sanitation at Villa Soleada, eco-friendly and fairly traded trash bags made by members of Villa Soleada, and Women's program for Copprome graduates. The main objective of the internship program is to expand beyond the one-week service trips and provide students with the opportunities to research, implement, and evaluate their own ideas in the real world.  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

Fredericksburg, Virginia - A team of seven UMW students and their professor recently spent a week in Honduras conducting extensive interviews with more than 50 families suffering from indoor air pollution from wood-burning stoves--the fourth-leading cause of death for children under 5 in developing countries. Indoor air pollution has similar affects as smoking during pregnancy; it's as if children are smokers at birth.

Next up for the students: raising enough money to provide every home in the Honduran refugee village of Siete de Abril with improved cookstoves. The group also plans to establish a program for monitoring air quality in the homes after the new stoves are installed.  read more »

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 »

Approximately 15 volunteers celebrated the Christmas season with the children of Copprome Orphanage and the community of Siete de Abril. Winter service trip volunteers brought over 125 suitcases of donations, providing presents that made Christmas possible for nearly 300 children. “Without these donations, these kids wouldn’t have food or gifts,” says Shin Fujiyama, “We saw a lot of smiles this year.”

On Christmas, volunteers brought the children of Copprome to a local mall to watch a movie, and were then treated to dance performances by all the children at cooprome's holiday party that evening.

The college world is a uniquely preparatory environment that rarely affords students the opportunity to apply their work in the classroom to real world change. Of course, this is a principal divide that SHH is consistently working to bridge. This Fall, the University of Mary Washington and SHH have partnered to create an independent study course in Economics called Doing Development. The class, which includes seven students taught by Dr. Shawn Humphrey, is focusing upon the problem of indoor-air-pollution, which the World Health Organization identifies as the cause of premature death for nearly 2.5 million people annually. For those individuals at Siete de Abril who are reliant on wood-burning cooking mechanisms, indoor-air-pollution may be linked to lung cancer, emphysema, and asthma.  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 »

The August 2007 trip took the first major preparatory step towards the work soon to start in Siete de Abril. The twelve group members from Mary Washington, William and Mary, Hollins, and UVA constructed a house for Don Chepe Perreira, in the name of his five children –all currently living at Copprome– to serve as prototype for the 75 homes to be built in the village. The group also met with the mayor of El Progreso regarding the ongoing petition to receive the land occupied by the village in donation from the city. Construction in Siete de Abril is now projected to begin in October.  read more »