|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Organization | Las Sonrisas de los Niños |
| website | http://www.lasonrisa.info/ |
| Country | Honduras |
| Program Costs | |
| Duration | |
| Room & Board | |
| Language Requirements | |
|
|
|
|
|
Simply put, Las Sonrisas de los Niños (The Smiles of the Children) is a project
designed to help poor kids in and around the rural village of El Cacao in
Honduras, Central America. We opened on May 21st, 2007, and are a project that
combines pre school-aged childcare with an overall youth center for kids up into
their early teens. Life in rural areas and villages in places such as Honduras
is far different from the small town or country life we have in the "first
world." In El Cacao the streets are muddy or dusty dirt trails, the houses are
typically made of sticks and mud, many people are without the most basic
electric service, and there is very little to do. There is a school but for a
variety of reasons it is often closed and tends to be ineffective when open.
Older children are often marginally literate at best and unable to comprehend
such basic concepts as dates and calendars, the idea that there are different
countries, cultures, and languages, and overall that anything exists outside of
the village and its poverty. We once asked a group of 11-12 year-olds to name a
country besides Honduras and, after some period of thought, one of them ventured
the answer of "Jutiapa," which is a small town a few miles away. El Cacao is a
typical poor village where many families sit around without hope for a better
life, and the kids sit around in idleness, ignorant of the ideas that there can
be a future and that life can actually be fun. |
|
|
|
Copyright 2007 - 2010
WWW.VAOPS.COM
|