By Hannah Daws | Fundraising Manager
January 2021 project update
Happy New Year
First of all, we would like to wish all our lovely GlobalGiving supporters a very happy 2021. 2020 was undoubtedly challenging on so many levels and we hope very much that the year ahead will start to see our lives return to some sort of normality. But despite the many challenges we are delighted to have reached some notable milestones during the year and most crucially, we were able to maintain an education for all the 20,000 impoverished children in our care worldlwide, including our schools in Honduras. The photo here shows the school-girls in Tegucigalpa, Honduras celebrating Christmas with the Sisters of Mary.
School inauguration
In 2020, we were delighted to celebrate the inauguration of the new school building at the boys' school in Amarateca, Honduras. The new building has increased capacity at the school by 320 and includes accommodation and teaching areas for new children together with facilities for medical and dental care.
Storm Eta
In November, Honduras was significantly affected by Storm Eta which unleashed devastation across central America. The poorest communities of Honduras were badly affected with over 300,000 people displaced. Our children in school came to no harm but many were unable to contact their families.
The school in Tegucigalpa sheltering the children was battered by the storm causing substantial damage to the roof. Burst water pipes have caused water damage to the roof of the library requiring urgent maintenance work and the replacement of many precious learning resources. Thanks to our donors we have been able to repair this structural damage. Read more about how severe climatic events always hit the world’s poor the hardest.
School children and graduates helping on the COVID-19 front line
Our school children have made important contributions to the fight against COVID-19. This has involved making much needed PPE equipment for local hospitals in Honduras and nursing graduates from our Brazil programme caring for patients with the virus. And we are proud to introduce you to Jerome, a graduate from our Philippines programme, who is Humanitarian Manager for Save the Children in Manila. Read about his typical working day helping on the front line and how the Sisters of Mary changed his life.
Stories from our graduates is a great way of showing the impact we have had on their lives.
Meet Clara:
Clara comes from a large family who live in one of the poorest regions of Honduras. Her loving, but uneducated parents worked hard at menial jobs which often took them away from the family which was desperately deprived with little money for food or basic supplies to maintain their existence.
The Sisters of Mary met Clara during their community work in 2003 and were able to offer her a place at the girls’ school in Honduras. Clara worked hard at school and excelled at maths and physics. When she left school, she had the skills to find work and was able to study for a teaching degree part-time. As a fully qualified maths and physics teacher she has made a good career.
She has used her success to support 25 members of her family with education and healthcare opportunities so that they are all lifted out of poverty. She is now back at the girls’ school in Honduras, using her skills and knowledge to help the next generation of girls in the programme to overcome their difficult early lives and realise their potential.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
