Honduras/ The Organization for Youth Empowerment

By Richard Lakin

I heard from friends in Honduras a few days ago about the ongoing political crisis there. Everyone is safe, but they characterized the situation as “unstable.” Of all the places that I’ve traveled to, Honduras is one that I’ve become particularly fond of, yet it’s also where I sensed the most personal danger. I remembered the video shoot that we did a few years ago in El Progreso, in northwestern Honduras, for the International Youth Foundation.

Honduras is a very green and lush country, with thick tropical hardwood forests and the terraced hillsides of coffee plantations. On the ride from the San Pedro Sula airport to El Progreso, there is mile after mile of banana and sugarcane fields, interrupted by the occasional designer underwear factory. The farther you get from the cities, the more people you see using equine transportation. I’ve been stopped by military roadblocks more often in Honduras than anywhere else in my travels. Most small businesses and restaurants have guards wearing body armor and carrying shotguns, and I saw several businessmen accompanied by armed bodyguards all the way to the departure gate at the airport. Kidnapping is not uncommon in Honduras. Nonetheless, it can be very beautiful and charming, and I’ve gone back there on several occasions to see more of it. We took the name of our organization, 18 rabbits, from the Mayan king after visiting the ruins at Copán.

We were there to interview Ana Luisa Ahern and Justin Otero; two of the founders of The Organization for Youth Empowerment. Both are in their mid-20’s. O.Y.E. operates a diverse program of services to the children of Honduras. Primarily, they provide scholarships to children in orphanages, but they are ubiquitous in their efforts to improve the lives of the local youth.

Honduras is very poor…one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. There’s little access to suitable water in the rural areas, and there’s malaria and cholera. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch hit Central America. Tens of thousands of people died and millions were left homeless in Honduras and Nicaragua. Many children, orphaned and displaced by the hurricane, roam the streets…without families or income…sniffing glue and living however they can in the grimmest of circumstances.

There’s very little educational development for the children who end up in the orphanages, which are so overwhelmed it’s all they can do just to provide food and shelter. O.Y.E. works with the orphanages to bring the children scholarships so that they don’t end up back on the street when they leave. They also have art programs for the younger kids in order to improve their developmental skills and self-esteem.

Another component of O.Y.E.’s program is to provide money and school supplies to children whose parents are too poor to send them to public school. Without this, many children are forced to drop out and comb the local landfill for bottles and cans for the recycling money. I saw this while we there, and we were chased out of a landfill by a group of adults wielding machetes.

O.Y.E. provides so many efforts for children that it’s hard to characterize them all. On our first night there, we drove to an orphanage in the mountains outside of El Progreso. As we got higher into the mountains, the air cooled and there was the rich organic smell of the tropical forest. There were orchids in bloom, growing out of the moss on trees, and there were feral macaws in the forest hammock.

It was a boy’s orphanage, mostly for kids that had been living on the street and addicted to glue. Ana Luisa and Justin were there to coach a soccer practice, but really to mentor and provide positive role models and guidance. These kids have few adult influences…and the ones they do have are other street people who are exploitive. It helps these boys to develop a sense of trust by having adults around who don’t want something from them.

At each orphanage we visited, there was noticeable excitement when the kids saw Ana Luisa and Justin arrive. These children sit around bored all day with little to do because there’s just no money available to fund any services other than warehousing them. The O.Y.E. staff hands out educational manipulatives to the children to stimulate their learning development, and they become kids again…not the grim little adults that we saw when we drove up.

O.Y.E. and its staff are the real thing…humanitarians who are making a big difference in the lives of Honduran children. Hopefully, the current political crisis in Honduras won’t make their job even tougher.

There is a video about O.Y.E. on the 18 rabbits website.