Overarching Goal and Objectives:

Goal:

to build leadership and life skills of youth in the Americas through exchange, civic engagement, and collaborative community development

Objectives:

1. increase active youth involvement in communities
2. increase knowledge and awareness of cultural, environmental, and health issues
3. collaborate with community members on Community-Based Initiative (CBI) process
   

Project Specific Activities:

Volunteers will collaborate with Plan Honduras community youth groups to prepare presentations for a large youth fair, whose theme is selected by community youth at the beginning of the project. Past themes for the fairs include recycling and community culture. Often, community youth groups will use the opportunity of being at a fair to share their youth group initiatives with other youth and raise funds for future initiatives via the sale of local products.

Volunteers will also work with youth to facilitate educational activities for children between the ages of 5-12. Educational activities will focus on health and the environment, but will also include components of creative expression, youth leadership, and team building.  Some examples of 2007 topics from the Lempira, Honduras project include environment, physical education, art, dental hygiene, leadership and teambuilding.

Finally, Volunteers will work with the Plan youth groups to plan and implement a Community-Based Initiative. This activity aims to develop the leadership capacity of youth as they brainstorm ways to take an active leadership role in the development of their communities. Some examples from 2007 projects in Lempira with Plan include planting a school garden, illuminating the school, repairing school buildings and cleaning up trash around the community.

Project Area:

All host communities are located within four hours of La Paz. The department/state of La Paz is located in central western Honduras, 2 hours northwest of Tegucigalpa, Honduras’ capital. Staff headquarters will be in the department’s capital, La Paz, a small and quiet city with a population of 17,000 located on the southern edge of the Comayagua Valley. All Volunteers will be in communities located in the mountains.

The mountain communities are located to the west and south of the city. In June and July the weather is warm during the day (in the 60s and 70s) and cooler or cold at night depending on the altitude. During these months it is also the rainy season.

Project History:

Honduras was the first country AMIGOS ever visited in 1965, when almost 300 Volunteers provided human immunizations against polio. For the next 17 years (except 1974), AMIGOS Volunteers worked on immunization, eyeglass distribution, animal health, well digging, and community sanitation projects in 13 of the 18 departments of Honduras.

After time away during the 1980s due to economic and political instability, AMIGOS returned in 1993 to Lempira to participate in community sanitation, dental hygiene education and environmental programs until 1998. In 2003, AMIGOS began working with Plan in the region of La Paz.  The following year, the decision was made to move the project to Lempira, where AMIGOS collaborated successfully with Plan for four years.  This year Plan has assessed their strategic vision and determined that it is time for AMIGOS to return to La Paz.

Partner Agencies:

Plan International Honduras

Further Actions:

• Apply to Volunteer
• Apply to Serve on Project Staff
• View Photos from the 2007 Honduras Project