Project Leader Biographies: Asociación Andar

Santa Meléndez is the current director of Asociación Andar. Santa joined Andar in 1993, when the non-profit was only six years old. Santa’s background is in social work from the Autonomous National University of Honduras (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, UNAH) and she has over twenty years of experience working with development projects and community-based education in rural areas of Honduras. Santa and her sister Narda, the founder of Asociación Andar, both grew up in a small community in northern Honduras, where their father was a day laborer in the banana industry. Their story is an extraordinary one. Having grown up in extreme poverty, Narda, the eldest in the family, was able to make her way through school and eventually made it to the national university in Tegucigalpa. In the years that followed, she helped to bring each of her five sisters to join her in the capital and over time helped all of them to attain a college education. It is, perhaps, because of their own childhood in poverty, that both Narda and Santa have held such strong convictions about working for a more just and equitable future for Honduras.

During her work with Andar, Santa has been involved in numerous investigations related to human rights and women’s rights in poor rural communities. These investigations have included recent studies related to the working conditions of women and girls in the melon, shrimp, and sugar cane industries in southern Honduras, diagnostic studies of the functioning of existing women’s organizations in the department of Choluteca, and studies related to nutrition and health among rural women and children. Santa was responsible for the creation of the “Siemprevivas” books and tapes, a radio education program that is used by non-profits across Central America to promote self-esteem development and organization among rural women. She also recently helped produce another radio series related to human rights, in collaboration with USAID, which has aired in many regions of Honduras. Santa currently oversees the organization’s functioning from their main office in Tegucigalpa and is responsible for supervising Andar’s current projects, including the CEDIF.

Emily Montgomery is currently a doctoral student in Latin American History at the University of California - San Diego, after working as an educator in both formal and informal settings.  Emily also serves as the primary contact for Asociación Andar here in the U.S. Emily first became connected with Asociación Andar in the summer of 1999, when she traveled to Honduras on a scholarship from Carleton College to work with Andar’s CEDIF programs in the department of Yuscarán. During that summer, she observed at three of the CEDIFs in the region and returned home to complete a research project and photographic display on community-based education for Carleton. In the spring of 2001, after completing her education credentials in secondary education, Emily was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to return to Honduras for the 2002 Honduran school year. Emily’s focus was to further study community-based education, while working together with Asociación Andar to implement the first CEDIF in the municipality of Marcovia in southern Honduras.

The CEDIF officially opened in June of 2002, working with 32 preschool age children and their mothers in that first year. During that year, Emily also worked with Andar and local community leaders in Cedeño to plan a scholarship program that would allow highly intelligent and motivated students who lacked financial resources to continue their education beyond sixth grade. Since leaving Honduras, Emily has continued to be actively involved in finding both funding and long-term volunteers for the CEDIF program. The scholarship program, which was active from 2003 until the end of the school year in 2007, was another collaborative project between Andar and generous donors here in the United States. Emily continues to serve as the primary point-person for the project here in the United States.