Advent and Christmas spirit Our volunteer Fabienne introduced the Swiss tradition of having an Advent calendar to Honduras. The children did not really understand the sense behind it and why they were not allowed to open all the Christmas presents on the same day. Every child was allowed to open one present and they all were very happy with what they got. Another tradition is baking cookies. As we all love sweets, we increased the recipe ingredients eightfold and baked six different types of cookies. In spite of the huge amount of cookies, they were all gone very quickly.
Festive season We spent the festive season in the children’s home in a quiet atmosphere. Every child received new clothes and shoes for Christmas, which is a tradition here in Honduras. On December 24, we received a delicious dinner including the famous Tamales. We watched a Christmas movie together and then we went to church. Christ Child was born at midnight, which we celebrated with the matching Bible passage. On…
New Volunteers Fabienne Hofacker is visiting us during two months and helps us in our everyday life; she looks after the youngest children, sews torn pants, has crafted an Advent calendar and filled it with presents. Giovanna Ardüser visited us during her trip in Central America. Together they beat egg whites and cream during five hours in order to make chocolate-banana roulades for the children’s afternoon snack. It was worth the effort, as everything was gone within only five minutes. Giovanna invited us to the waterpark, where the children enjoyed the swimming pools and the water slides. On that day, there was a karaoke-competition where Enrique received huge applause for his performances.
Graduation In November, the school year finished and we were happy to receive the children’s report cards. They all passed the school year with good, very good and excellent grades. The children received 14 diplomas for solidarity, academic excellence and excellent behavior. This is the result of…
New volunteer On October 3, Karin Eggenberger from Obervaz came to our children’s home for three weeks. She will write her matriculation project about our children’s home and came here to take a look at it. She helped a lot in the Sala Cuna but also helped with other daily work. Being a professional soccer player, she played soccer with the boys every evening and showed them that women, too, can be good at it.
Celebration with all the children’s homes October 13 was a very special day for many Honduran children, as the charities CEPUDO, Angels of Hope and Food for the Poor invited 25 children’s homes from Honduras for a gathering. All the children wore the same t-shirt and the whole picture looked like a blue sea with sparkling children’s eyes. On this day, there was a soccer tournament but our soccer teams from “yo quiero ser…” did not really succeed, as they were among the youngest of all. In the afternoon, there were different games to be played; sack races, face-painting and…
Return to Honduras Juan Carlos and Patricia spent a few weeks in Switzerland and came back home to the other children at the beginning of September. Although they arrived late in the evening, all the children were awake and greeted them with candles, self-picked flowers and banners. The children’s eyes shone like little stars.
Dia del Niño September 10 is the national day of the child in Honduras. This holiday arises from November 20, 1959, when the General Assembly of the United Nations came together with the goal to celebrate the universal rights of the children as a special day in every country of the world. On this occasion we received visitors every weekend of the month. Different organizations such as the Red Cross, the church Great Commission, a religious group from San Salvador and a secondary school class sent people to celebrate this day with us. Most of them brought a delicious lunch with cake and piñatas (colored container filled with sweets), played with the children and…
Circus visit At the beginning of June we visited the circus with those children who received good grades in class. Such excursions are great to reward our good students as well as to motivate the kids to study more. The kids really liked the smurfs and were deeply impressed by the skills of the different artists. We all enjoyed the show and returned home with everlasting memories.
Student visit from Kansas City A religious group from Kansas City, USA, visited us for six days under the lead of Mike de Baker. The community of faith is called Gran Commision and consists of 21 teenagers (between 13 to 22 years) and three leaders. Our kids organized everything by themselves. We had a welcome ceremony with singing and dancing performances. It is wonderful to see how much energy the kids invest in singing and dancing for hours. The welcome was even more affectionate, since this group visits the children’s home every year. This year, they painted parts of the outter walls, organized a play…
2008 - the experience of new things related to children, an approved study leave, and, above all, the visit to my former co-worker Patricia, led me to San Pedro Sula for three months. A month-long stay in 2010 and the conjoint 2 1/2 weeks in July 2012 with my partner Felix followed.
Contacting other children’s homes and the neighbourhood We try to maintain the relationship to other children’s homes. It is very interesting because some children know each other from the IHNFA, and they can cultivate their friendship by keeping in touch. This time we visited the children's home Pro Niño in Progresso. The boys played a soccer game and our kids won 1:0. There we also met Darwin again. He lived with us during two years, but since last summer he stays with his brother in Pro Niño.
Although we live in a very dangerous neighbourhood, we don’t want to lock ourselves in. On Saturday mornings, our children usually have a soccer tournament on the big soccer field next to the children’s home. That way, our children get into contact with other kids from the neighbourhood.
Mother’s Day The school organized a special program for Mother’s Day, in which the students performed class by class. From the smallest to the oldest, everybody gave their best and we have many a talent…
Easter-weekend: When angels travel... In Honduras, people usually travel during the Semana Santa (Easter-week). We also happily packed our things and we were looking forward to spend this special week in the “Chalet” in Santa Rosa de Copan. We started our journey full of emotions and anticipation…
After a one-hour bus ride, the good atmosphere was heavily interrupted! The fuse of the steering wheel came loose and Edwing wasn’t able to control the bus anymore. Our bus got out of control, smashed against a tree and came to a stop in a sand dune. The impact was really heavy; some seats became loose, two windows shattered into a thousand pieces and the children were thrown around. We evacuated the children through the windows, and luckily, most of the children only escaped with small cuts, bruises, crushes and with a nasty shock. Everybody was aided on the scene and three people had to go to the hospital; Carlitos broke his hand, Carlos broke his collar bone and Jhonson had a big wound…
Annex to Sala Cuna Edwing and Darling were hardworking roofers. The annex already has a roof, on which a second floor could be added. Now, our two talented Hondurans are working as bricklayers besides concreting our floor. In the next weeks, the paving tiles can be placed and the walls will be painted. Finally, the enhanced Sala Cuna can be opened.
Meeting of the foundation council The foundation council "yo quiero ser..." gathered in order to discuss the near future. The main topic was the expansion of the project concerning the older children. That means that we want to offer the best fitted education for every individual kid. This is not very easy in Honduras, because there are no apprenticeships of the likes we know in Switzerland. Either you get a degree at the university, or you follow the principle: „Learning by doing“.
Official events for the coming summer consist in the benefit lunch on August 5, 2012, organised by ORIGEN in Riom, and a market stand at “Scuntrada” in…
School Start Before our 27 primary students and one secondary student started school on February 6, we accommodated a new girl. Her name is Anahy, she will soon be five years old, and she grew up in a poor and unstable family, mainly living in the streets. In addition, her mother suffers from a mental handicap and is fatally ill.
School start is always accompanied by a huge amount of organizational matters. All the school uniforms and the shoes have to fit and everybody’s school bag has to be filled with all the necessary things. For the children it also means that they go back to having a daily routine: Getting up at 5.00 a.m., followed by showering and getting dressed, then everybody has to fulfil their little chores (cleaning the bathroom and bedroom, wiping, etc.). 6.00 a.m. is breakfast time, then the children wash the dishes and clean the dining room, and at 6.30 a.m. they leave for school. At noon, they are picked up by bus, they change their clothes, and after lunch they have…
Extension of the Sala Cuna The annex of the Sala Cuna is in full swing. Our Swiss volunteer Walter Pegorari, who stays with us from December to the end of February, was responsible for the fast building of the wall, so that the new children can move in until the end of February.
Visit of the "grandparents" Our "grandparents" Luisa and Pauli Scarpatetti visited us at the beginning of January. They quickly got used to the Honduran lifestyle and were integrated immediately. Pauli was a big idol mainly for the older boys, and everybody was highly impressed by his work, will to work, strength, precision and endurance. For every children’s room, he built a big wardrobe and a shoe rack, so that every child can now keep their clothes in their room. Luisa helped everywhere; she changed about 30 school clothes' zippers, wrote the children's names on all the school books, looked after the smallest of ou children and played for hours. All the children and the staff were really sad that they had…
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