Honduras Charity Trip to Zambrano

 

During the last few years that I still lived in Honduras, I was very involved with a Catholic youth group that made several charity trips throughout the year. I was very fortunate enough to be a part of the one close to Christmas season that went to Zambrano, about 4 hours north of our home and Honduras’s capital, Tegucigalpa.

 

What these charity trips normally consist of is our youth group asking our families and friends to donate (in good condition) clothing for all ages, toys, and particular foods. After we got enough for the number of people we’d be helping, we would divide them into genders and ages so that when we got to Zambrano, it was easier for us to help the people in need that would come in. After we gathered everything, we would join it in a bus we rented for all of us going (about 15 girls in total including those of us from the youth group that volunteered in attending, and the ladies that led our youth group).

 

I had been on many charity trips in my lifetime, both outside and inside Tegucigalpa, but this Zambrano charity trip I remember with a particular fondness because we didn’t only bring the people clothing and food and toys for their kids, which they were very grateful for, but we also attended a day in the local public primary school. This was probably the part of the trip I remember with the most fondness. Our purpose for going was to give the kids a day of fun with pinatas, candy, music, and games. When we got to the school, the youth group girls were divided into groups of two for each of the six grades. I was assigned fourth grade. The building was very run-down, with roofs looking like they needed some work, with only a fence around the piece of land made of wire. The girls were very shy and the boys slightly male chauvinistic towards the girls in school as well as towards us girls in the youth group.

 

Being a feminist myself, I couldn’t stand the idea of the girls in this public school having to stand boys with such bad sexist habits, but then I thought, “it’s not the boys’ fault, either.” The behavior these kids are learning is that of their parents, who, with no opportunity, learned the traditional, age-old gender roles from their parents as well. These kids were the last generation of a lineage of no education and gender specific roles, and they couldn’t get out of it and neither could their parents. I learned from this trip that I was intent on making the public school system in Honduras a better one in which boys and girls can learn that the roles their parents have taught them don’t bind them, and that through education they can become free from having to teach the same things to their children.

 

Even though we did have fun with the kids at the school and we did give their families new clothing so that they didn’t have to wear clothing or shoes with holes in them and we gave them a month of food to eat, I learned that what these families need is not for things to be given to them; they receive things from other youth groups and organizations many a time throughout the year. What they need is education. Not for just the kids, but for the parents, as well. Honduras will only grow once the public education system allows the kids to have social mobility and so that they will come up with initiatives on their own. That’s truly when Honduras will have social justice and the country will be at its peak economically, socially, and politically.