Students Helping Honduras (SHH), a newly chartered organization at Wake Forest University, plans to help destitute children in Honduras with a basic right: education.
SHH is a chapter of a larger national organization begun in 2007 by then college student and no CNN hero, Shin Fujiyama. SHH now operates in 50 colleges and several schools.
Co-Presidents of the Wake Forest SHH, Zach Hood and Caroline Neely, joined the group in their freshmen year and have conducted several trips to Honduras. The lack of educational opportunities, because of the absence of schools or their accessibility, or the use of bars or shacks as classrooms, has moved these seniors and their group to an extent that they look forward to returning to Honduras to work with educational infrastructure.
Since 2008, Wake Forest has been one of SHH’s first few college chapters. Since then, 60 students have visited Honduras on multiple trips and have raised $35,000 to build schools, provide clean safe drinking water, and work with extremely poor families and children.
While some have raised concerns about the safety issues in Honduras, Neely asserts that all of Wake’s students have returned from each trip with no injury or harm done to themselves. Instead, they have inspired other students to participate. One of the students who went on a recent trip, Sapna Pathak, confirms that her experience in Honduras has changed the way she views life. When she saw poor children appreciating what they have in life which, compared to herself or many US children their age, was nothing, Pathak realized that these poor children cherished happiness above everything else.
One of the most important ways of participating in SHH is through fundraising. Hood says that when people buy the organization’s baked goods, for example, the fund raised is directed toward construction projects.
SHH’s projects are peaceful collaborations with the Honduran government which selects schools from communities for the SHH members to work with. Then SHH members work closely with the administration and teachers of the selected schools.
SHH is growing constantly and is very committed to helping poor Honduran children gain access to education.
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