Cedeño Eductational Project

Together with the Honduran nonprofit, Asociación Andar, and with the help of individuals, schools and churches here in the US, we are improving educational opportunities for children and young adults in Cedeño, Honduras. Our two main educational projects are:

• The Center for Child & Family Development (Centro de Desarollo Infantil y Familiar, CEDIF) serving 36 preschool-aged children and their families
• The Thomas Montgomery Scholarship Project, a program that has allowed 38 middle and high school students to continue their studies in 2005.

Building a Future for Education

Students press sand between plastic soda bottles

In Cedeño, a poor fishing village in southern Honduras, the rainy season begins with unremitting force at the end of May, bringing a halt to most afternoon activity. But, for a clutch of dedicated students here, it's the rain that has brought them under one roof, so to speak, and given rise to an ingenious use of disposable soda bottles.

Located along the Gulf of Fonseca, Cedeño was once a tourist destination boasting dark, sandy beaches and a bay ringed by towering volcanoes. Over the past two decades, however, the Pacific Ocean has advanced at the destructive rate of 10 meters per year, gradually swallowing up the small hotels and quaint, thatch-roofed eateries that lined the shore. Without a viable tourist industry, Cedeño's economy is now largely dependent upon what local fishermen glean from the Gulf using dugout canoes and nets.

Cedeño has never had a traditional secondary school. Until recently, most families considered studying beyond the 6th grade a prohibitively expensive and unnecessary luxury ("You don't need your ABC's to fish," is one colloquialism). Now with the advent of a distance-learning program in Cedeño, however, a swelling roster of students and their teacher, Benjamín Herrera, are expanding their village's limited view of education.

The students, ages 11-62, are part of a nationwide distance learning program called Maestro en Casa (literally, "Teacher in the Home"). They listen to lectures broadcast over the radio and meet in the afternoon for classes. In 2001, when Mr. Herrera volunteered to run the program in Cedeño, only three students registered. Now, four years later, 115 students flock weekly to La Isla, the name Mr. Herrera has given to his rustic compound in Cedeño's estuary.

Students build a rain pavilion with empty plastic soda bottles.

One obstacle facing La Isla this year was the lack of a roof big enough to protect the burgeoning student body from the daily downpour. With scant resources and a lot of faith, Mr. Herrera and his motivated group of student leaders decided to build a pavilion using a cheap, readily available resource: thousands of empty plastic soda bottles littering the village.

They launched a community-wide bottle drive — in effect helping to clean up Cedeño — and amassed over 5,000 empty bottles. Then, after filling each bottle with sand, they formed construction teams and began to build the perimeter wall of the pavilion's foundation. Some mixed cement while others coaxed it into the cracks between the carefully arranged bottles. Then, students and community members together, they used buckets to haul 500 cubic yards of sand from the beach to fill in the area within the perimeter walls.

For Mr. Herrera, the process of planning and building the pavilion was just as important as the final product. "Because of their work on this project, there is among them a greater awareness of who they are and of the importance of working together," he says.

Mr. Herrera is intentionally fostering a holistic educational experience that extends well beyond traditional academia. Driven by his faith in God and commitment to others, he envisions a more economically stable Cedeño where a secondary education is a possibility — and a goal — for everyone.

The community's spirited collaboration in constructing the pavilion is evidence that gradually, bottle by bottle, Mr. Herrera and his students are realizing their vision.

One Student's Story

~ by Jose Eduardo Reyes ~

I'm 33 years old and have lived the majority of my life in Cedeño. I'm married with two children: a seven year old, Bessi, and a newborn, Jose Eduardo, Jr.

Despite the difficulties of our life here, I am still making the sacrifice to study. My idea is to get ahead so that I can get a better job, and so that my family can live better.

I finished eighth grade in Monjarás (a nearby village) in 1993, studying at a night school. I stopped studying at that point because I had to work so that my family could be more financially stable. Then, almost two years ago, with Maestro en Casa here in the community, I got back into school and haven't had any setbacks since.

This is my second year as a scholarship student. In the 9th grade in Maestro en Casa, don Benja submitted my name as a potential scholarship student because of my good grades and behavior. I was surprised because I didn't even know anything about the scholarship program. The scholarship has been great because it has helped me with almost all of the costs involved with my schooling. It has been a critical support.

Of all my years in school, this year — my final year in secondary school — has been the most difficult for me, largely because of a full-time job that I started in January. I have few chances to study during the day because the shrimp farm takes up most of my time. I do my homework at night, and have to miss class sometimes because of my job. In this way, finding a job this year has been a mixed blessing.

At work, my responsibility is to pump water from the ocean to a tank where we are growing shrimp larvae. I have to keep the water clean of bacteria so the shrimp stay healthy. This involves filtering the water, cleaning the tanks and feeding them with the algae they need to survive.

Where I work, I don't think I'll receive any immediate benefit for having finished high school. In fact, they don't have many well-educated people on staff because they don't want to pay the salary of a skilled professional. As it is, my salary doesn't cover all my expenses. I have to work extra hours and in other ways to make enough money. Unfortunately, a full time job with an adequate salary is impossible to find in Cedeño, even for a professional.

Nonetheless, I have always dreamed of continuing with my studies at the university level. My wife, Griselda, would also like to enter the university. She told me recently that we ought to wait to matriculate together so we can share books and cut down on costs.

Ideally, we would like to take distance courses so we can work while studying. There are several people here in Cedeño who study like this, traveling to Choluteca (a town about 1.5 hours away) on Saturdays and Sundays to take classes so they can work during the week. This is our dream. We don't think we're going to be able to matriculate right away next year because we're pretty limited financially right now, but we're thinking long-term. I would like to thank everyone who is helping us, the scholarship students.

Personally, I'm grateful for the support that I receive. Even though I haven't met the scholarship donors face-to-face, I have a deep appreciation for them. Things in Cedeño aren't exactly how we would like them to be, but we're fighting for our community, and their support is helping us do it.

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Can You Help?

Special needs children enjoy a day of exploration at the CEDIF preschool.

The new Honduran school year begins in February, so renewed scholarship pledges are needed for students! There is also a need for support to provide a stipend to the "educadoras" of the preschool, as well as a hot lunch served each day for the preschool children.

SCHOLARSHIP NEEDS:

• $200/ year provides in-home "radio" education for one jr. high youth
  
  
• $300/ year provides one youth the ability to attend a jr. high school
  
  
• $800-$1000/year allows a student to attend one year of high school

PRESCHOOL NEEDS:

• A daily nutritious hot meal for 36 pre-school children is:
  $30 /week or $125/ month
  
  
• A stipend for an "educadora" who assists in the classroom is:
  $35/month or $350/year

REMEMBER: All donations are tax-deductible!!