Hi all,
I was sitting (procrastinating from revision) thinking about August and all that will follow when I decided it would be a good idea to write a post on my journey and specifically Honduras. Now that most know what I’ll be doing later this year, I realised not many know why I’m volunteering as a teacher in a distant land.
Honduras appealed to me personally for many reasons, firstly due to the fact they speak Spanish (and this is a skill I could do with brushing up on from GCSE), but also because after a quick google I realised it looked like a naturally beautiful place. Of course, there are amazing Spanish speaking places all over the world (many much closer than Honduras) so why this particular country?
There are plenty of good reasons to want to be located in Honduras: it has a vibrant culture combining both Spanish and Caribbean influences with a strong sense of community as well as truly stunning scenery. However it is clear Honduras isn’t a complete sunshine filled paradise (although it is rather sunny for an English girl)…
The World Bank (2013) claimed 62.8% of Hondurans live in poverty, with 6/10 households being subject to extreme poverty of income of less than $2.50 per day. On face value this already sounds unbelievable but it becomes even more shocking when compared to Britain. Here in 2014 6.5% of the population were in persistent income poverty. Although this number is already drastically lower it also has to be taken into consideration that we have the Welfare State. This thankfully offers some help and stops individuals falling into absolute poverty – Honduras have no such system. It is hard to escape from the harsh reality of the vulnerability this creates, being one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere leads to high levels of violence, much of which being the result of gangs and drug wars.
Education is, I believe, such a key part of a child’s upbringing, providing knowledge and with this the power to make change. However, due to the high poverty rates many children have to quit school at a much earlier age than recommended to help support their families. Education is free from 6-12 but even with the state-subsidisation many families cannot afford to buy the resources needed for school, such as supplies or uniform resulting in less children going. Sadly this can be seen as the National Institute of Statistics conducted a study in 2006 that showed approximately 368,000 of the 1.7 million children aged 5-12 didn’t receive schooling in that year – with attendance rates lower for females than males.
So Honduras isn’t perfect, in fact, far from it. Which is exactly why I picked to spend 12 months of my life there. I want to take a year out of my own education to be able to spread what I have been fortunate enough to have been given. If I’m going to be in a new, exciting place why not make it a beautiful one that I can make a positive impact in?
Apologies for the length of this, what started off as a simple blog post turned into a semi-essay (the A-Levels are clearly getting to me) but well done if you managed to get this far!! As a final point: I will be very shortly announcing an upcoming event I’m really pumped for so keep your eyes peeled for that!
Thank you to everyone for all of the continued support, it means the world to me,
Charlotte 🙂
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