Poverty-striken Honduras is unlikely to be a Freedom Ship destination

Show Your Support
Order Shoulder to Shoulder
T-Shirts

Nutrition: Chronic malnutrition is a constant problem in our rural villages. Working with the World Food Program, Shoulder to Shoulder is feeding 1500 to 1600 children per day in 22 village schools. Parents participate by picking up the food and cooking it at the school. Children benefit by receiving at least one nutritious meal a day, which also makes them more likely to stay in school instead of quitting to gather corn from the fields. YOUR donation of $25 will feed one child for a full year!


Families at risk: Honduras has no safety net for poor families in crisis. Every day our field workers encounter single mothers, people with disabilities and families living in extreme poverty whose very survival is at risk.Some forms of assistance include milk and food for sick and malnourished children as well as transportation and healthcare costs for severe medical cases. YOU can keep a family from falling into the abyss of survival crisis with a donation of $100-$200.

           Where they come from

In Guatemala, 75% of the population lives in severe poverty!

 

 Poverty in America is not having cable TV, not having a car for every member of the family, not having the newest sneakers or, god forbid, not having an Xbox. Very few people in the states are actually starving, without shoes, without clothing, or the means to gain a publicly funded education. Call me a jerk, but most people that find themselves this badly off in the USA have made some bad decisions somewhere along the line. In Tamilnadu however, it's a whole different story.

 FAO/20729/A.Proto
Rural poverty in Honduras  Poverty does not completely
explain undernourishment

Two women share household chores in a slum on the outskirts of Guatemala CityTwo women share household chores in a slum on the outskirts of Guatemala City, Central America. Gary Moore photo.

ECONOMY: Guatemala February 2007 - After the signing of the final peace accord in December 1996, Guatemala was well-positioned for rapid economic growth over the next several years, until a financial crisis in 1998 disrupted the course of improvement. The subsequent collapse of coffee prices left what was once the country's leading export sector in depression and had a severe impact on rural incomes.The distribution of income and wealth remains highly skewed. The wealthiest 10% of the population receives almost one-half of all income; the top 20% receives two-thirds of all income. As a result, about 80% of the population lives in poverty, and two-thirds of that number--or 7.6 million people--live in extreme poverty. Guatemala's social development indicators, such as infant mortality and illiteracy, are among the worst in the hemisphere. Chronic malnutrition among the rural poor worsened with the onset of the crisis in coffee prices, and the United States has provided disaster assistance and food aid in response.

ECONOMY:Honduras October 2006 - Honduras is one of the poorest and least developed countries in Latin America, with nearly two-thirds of Hondurans living in poverty.

Economy: Nicaragua January 2007 - Nicaragua remains the second-poorest nation in the hemisphere.

Source: Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs(http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/1922.htm)

photo 2

Buzzards and children compete for scraps at the Tegucigalpa, Honduras, landfill. Boys scavenge for anything they can eat or sell. Northbound freight trains through Mexico are crowded with Hondurans fleeing poverty and in search of work or a relative in the U.S. Los Angeles Times

                                                                                                       Little Girl in Mazatlan, Mexico

"Here is the picture of the child living in the garbage dump."
--Buell Hadley, February, 2001, Mazatlan, Mexico.

Buell and his wife were on vacation in Mazatlan, when the Lord prompted his heart to get involved with the building of a new church out near the city dump, where the poverty is "beyond belief." This little girl lives in literally a tiny "shack" of a dwelling, right at the edge of the city dump. Buell stated that the stinch, (and heat) was so bad that he (had problems with almost vomiting and diarrhea). Buell overheard a Mexican man state to another volunteer, "When you save our children from this lifestyle, then I will see your Jesus in you."


Médecins sans Frontières estimates that there are one million people in Guatemala City living in the streets or in slum conditions. Many are victims of the civil war, which traumatised the country during the 1980s and early 90s as well refugees from rural poverty.

Scavenging at the dump, Guatemala
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Homes in the barios of TegucigalpaEl Hogar has grown from solely a home, to three homes and schools with four programs: Elementary School, Middle School, Agricultural School, and Technical Institute serving about 200 children ages five to 20 from both urban and rural parts of Honduras. Some children are truly abandoned or orphaned, others cannot be provided for by their impoverished families in a country where $2,700 is the annual per capita average income and 53 percent of the population live below the poverty level. The average educational level is only second grade, yet children at El Hogar receive a sixth grade education at the Elementary School and a chance for a future. They then move into a Middle School program of life-skills, allowing them to grow physically, mentally and spiritually to prepare for a technical education at either the Episcopal Agricultural School or at Saint Mary ’s Technical Institute.

 
Honduras has suffered through recurrent natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, floods and landslides

Honduras is a small peaceful Central American country nestled between Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It is the second poorest country in this hemisphere with 70% of the population living in conditions of extreme poverty. Housing is primitive, healthcare almost non-existent and unemployment is massive.

Honduras

The struggle for human survival is catastrophic. Hunger, sickness, malnutrition and neglect are an everyday reality and thousands of innocent children are found abandoned, orphaned or living in unthinkable conditions. For many it means a life of violence, prostitution, addiction, child labor and criminal activity. The cycle of poverty and crime often seems hopeless and the need for intervention and support most urgent


These families live in a constant state of poverty, often owning enough food to feed them for one day.  Tomorrow is tomorrow.  Many rely on subsistence farming to grow enough food to feed their family.  Because of soil condition, economics, and culture - beans and corn are the staples of the rural Honduran diet.  There is simply not enough nutrition for a healthy life in this diet.

World: Americas

The curse of cut trees

Exceptional damage - deforestation left nothing to keep the soil

By the BBC's special correspondent in Honduras, Ben Brown

There is not much left of the once fabulous forestry of Honduras. About half the trees of this country have disappeared over the last few decades - they have been chopped or burnt down.

 

Deforestation has been a concern for environmentalists for quite some time, as they fear that the systematic slaughter of the forests will eventually suffocate the earth. But felling rainforests seems to have taken its toll much earlier than expected. For now it seems that Hurricane Mitch has been far more deadly than it need to have been, just because the forests were no longer there. Trees help the soil absorb water, but without them, the torrential rain dumped by Mitch caused lethal mudslides that buried people alive.


[ image: Mudslides filled up entire houses, and buried people alive]
Mudslides filled up entire houses, and buried people alive
Dr Carlos Medina, a former environment minister of Honduras says that some of the places worst hit were exactly those, where the trees had long gone.

"I think that the destruction produced by Hurricane Mitch was compounded by about 30% by this deforestation," he said.

It is not just felling that threatens the forests. All too often Honduran peasant farmers start forest fires - they burn the woods so that they can cultivate the land, growing corn and beans in particular. It is the same slash and burn that has ravished so much of the world's rainforests.

Illegal logging has done plenty of damage, too.

But in Honduras it is poverty that is the real problem. Few people have gas or electricity, for them the main source of energy is the forest. They simply cut down trees for fuel. Now environmentalists hope that the carnage caused by Hurricane Mitch will at least make Hondurans think twice about what they are doing to their trees.

"I am sure this is going to result in much more serious attempts to halt deforestation," says James Smyle, a forestry expert. But he adds that the key to the problem is poverty.

While many people have to struggle for survival, environmentalists and their causes are not particularly popular in Honduras. Over the last few years, two of them have even been shot dead - murdered, because hey were campaigning to save the rainforest.

The message that Honduras does need its trees is not an easy one to sell.

Poverty: June 9, 2006Poverty: June 9, 2006    Roatan, Honduras...a kitchen on the water.

CAFTA expands NAFTA-style free trade to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica -- with the possible later addition of the Dominican Republic. CAFTA's potential impact on workers -- especially women workers -- is a cause of grave concern for many, as women make up 45 percent of the global workforce but are still 70 percent of the world's poor. Seventy-five percent of workers in the Central America live on less than $2 a day.

Coffee Workers at the Sol Cafe, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Photo by Sarah Arnason.
Coffee workers at the Sol Cafe in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.