How FEIH, a U.S. based grassroots charitable organization, completed one of the largest infrastructure projects in Honduras

The Foundation for Education in Honduras (FEIH) is a grassroots charitable organization focused on providing children in Honduras with a better education. FEIH accomplishes this by building schools and specifically focusing on having clean, ventilated classrooms for each grade. In addition to the schools themselves, FEIH also provides desks and chairs built by local artisans, the uniforms the children are required to wear in Honduras, shoes (also made by local artisans), backpacks (made in Honduras), school supplies, filtered water, playgrounds, fans, clean bathrooms, access for people with disabilities, basketball courts and soccer fields. FEIH partners with the parents and the municipalities, committing the communities to maintain the schools and the municipalities to contribute materials for the construction of the schools.

At its essence, FEIH is helping to rebuild Honduras’s educational infrastructure and the benefits are many and meaningful. Specifically, children are getting educated in a safe, clean environment, people in our communities are remaining in Honduras and not heading to the U.S. border, money is going into the local economies as FEIH pays the construction team and the local artisans, and the children and parents have hope — hope for the future and hope for their country.

To illustrate the power of FEIH, Ramiro Ocasio (co-founder of FEIH), Jordan Elkin (President of the Junior Board of FEIH), Marissa Flores (FEIH’s Director in Honduras) and I spoke to the Mayor of Esquias, the municipality where FEIH built its 14th school. Here is the story and it’s a story that can be retold again and again as FEIH transforms Honduras.

FEIH’s board of directors selected the CEB Francisco Morazán as its 14th school. CEB Francisco Morazan is located in the community of La Masica, which is in the municipality of Esquias. Esquias is located in the Department of Comayagua (Honduras has 18 Departments) and is the second largest municipality in Comayagua. 22,000 people live in Esquias and the main industries are coffee and sweet potatoes. Poverty in Esquias is palpable and the people of La Masica struggle to survive.

In essence, the children of La Masica are no different from our children. They are innocent, full of wonder and want to play, learn and grow. But in La Masica, like most of rural Honduras, the children were not getting an education. While, in theory, the children could go to school, the infrastructure was not conducive to learn. Notably, girls would not even go to school because there were no clean bathrooms for them to use. In short, the children of La Masica, and, therefore, the parents and the community of La Masica, had no hope of growth and had no hope of nurturing the children.

Here is the original CEB Francisco Morazan school in La Masica.

Imagine more than 120 children, grades kindergarten through 9th, trying to learn in this structure. Imagine sending your children to that school. It makes you want to cry to think that the parents’ only options for educating their children were to send them to a “school” like this or make a perilous, arduous journey to the U.S. border in search of a better life. FEIH wants to fix this dilemma, this problem, this inhumanity by re-building every school in Honduras.

Consequently, FEIH took on this project. FEIH, together with the community and the municipality, re-built CEB Francisco Morazan. The total cost of construction, as well as the desks, chairs, shoes, uniforms, backpacks and school supplies was just over $40,000. The trasformation of CEB Francisco Morazan is life changing. Literally, frowns turned to smiles and despair turned to hope.

Here is what the Mayor of Esquias had to say. The re-building of CEB Francisco Morazan was the largest educational infrastructure project in the Department of Comayagua. School 14 does not just transform the community of La Masica, but also surrounding communities as the school is large enough and has enough classrooms to go through 9th grade. The project was so meaningful because it brought together FEIH, the community, the teachers and the municipality and all of these constituents worked together to make a the community’s dream a reality. School 14 allows the community to stay together and parents know that their children are safe all day long, they are learning and they are building life skills. This means families in La Masica are staying in Honduras not leaving. Most importantly, the children of La Masica can be children. They can play, they can smile, they can have fun, they can be safe, they can grow and they can learn.