Who is doing development work here in Honduras? At the moment, I am sitting here in a conference, Project Honduras, in the Copan Ruins surrounded about 100 other people who also care passionately about the future of Honduras. These are people from all walks of life, young volunteers teaching English in local schools, experts who have been doing community development work for over 30 years, church leaders, representatives from youth programs, water organizations, and HIV/AIDS projects. We have gathered here to share ideas, learn from each other, and better understand the work of others here in Honduras.
It’s inspiring, to see how many people have dedicated such significant amounts of time, energy, and passion to improving the lives of Hondurans. It also makes me feel really secure in the work of Global Brigades. In comparison to some of the organizations here, we are so young, but after listening to their presentations and learning about their work, I feel very confident that the quality our work in Global Brigades. For example, Public Health Brigades is about 10 months old now, and I just heard a presentation from an organization that’s been working here in Honduras for about ten years, and they are doing almost the exact same sort of projects. So now, I can learn from them. I can learn from their mistakes over the past ten years, how do they do their community organizing, what new projects are they developing, where do they find their funding? And getting so many new ideas and contacts as well. For example, getting Honduran students more involved in Global Brigades has been a goal of Public Health Brigades for a while, and now I have at least 4 different people to contact who work with Honduran youth with whom to reach out.
Tomorrow I have the opportunity to be one of the presenters, to share about our work with Public Health Brigades. I’m so excited to tell this room of experts about the work of our volunteers. Without each one of them, our projects wouldn’t be possible. I am going to brag about how because our volunteers’ personal dedication and energy, the face of health of Parajillos is being completely changed. Global Brigades is growing exponentially and we are quickly becoming a big player in the development world.
