Awaken Honduras is a partnership between Mosaic, its Awaken Humanity ministry and the country of Honduras, represented by the church of Villa Linda Miller and its ministry to the families who work in the Tegucigalpa trash dump.
In June of 2008, a team from Mosaic will journey to Tegucigalpa, Honduras (Tegus for short), to work with two impoverished communities. Mosaic is seeking to unleash the talents and passions of its own community, in order to serve these Hondurans and address their physical, spiritual, emotional and relational needs.
Our team from Mosaic will tackle two different issues through this initial trip in June, even while seeking to lay the foundation for a long-term partnership.
Entrepreneurship
Small Business Creation in a Low-Income Honduran Neighborhood
Businesspeople and entrepreneurs from the Mosaic community will work with the low-income neighborhood of Villa Linda Miller to assist with the creation and launch of several small businesses, or micro-enterprises. Bringing to bear decades worth of experience in the creation of new ventures and the management of market-leading companies in the US, our team will conduct research on local business opportunities, identify and recruit potential entrepreneurs from within Villa Linda Miller, and work with these Honduran entrepreneurs to successfully structure and launch their new business.
By taking the time to understand the local context and culture, gauging the Honduran economic environment and getting to know entrepreneurs on a personal level, our team will be able to assist each would-be entrepreneur to create a business plan, analyze the associated capital needs, secure adequate funding and launch into the local market. Our team’s work will be supported and extended through partnership with a 3rd-party microfinance institution with operations and staff on the ground in Honduras.
Villa Linda Miller is a community that was constructed after Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras in 1998 and washed away all of its 220 families’ homes. While Villa Linda Miller has been a model community for post-Mitch reconstruction, its residents continue in poverty, and this neighborhood is in need of local economic development to create a sustainable, hope-filled future for themselves and their children.
The Awaken Honduras team will partner with the church in Villa Linda Miller and its pastor, Jeony Ordoñez, as its local contacts and connection to the broader VLM community. To learn more about the community of Villa Linda Miller and its history, please click here.
Story-telling and Media Creation
Telling the Story of the Tegucigalpa Trash Dump Community Through Film and Photography
Throughout each day, rain or shine, garbage trucks from Tegucigalpa arrive at the municipal trash dump a mile from Villa Linda Miller to dump a total of 1,500 tons of trash daily. Covering several acres of mountainous land, the landfill would be unremarkable were it not also home to approximately 1,000 adults and 250 children who spend each day scavenging through the freshly-dumped garbage to find food to eat and recyclable materials they can sell for an income of $3-4 per day.
In 2002, Pastor Jeony Ordoñez and his wife Jessie (of the church in Villa Linda Miller) started an organization called AFE (Amor, Fé y Esperanza, translated Love, Faith and Hope) to serve the families at the dump. They realized that by giving the children a formal education, they would both foster a hope-filled future and relieve the kids from daily presence at the toxic dump. What began as a rudimentary class held on top of the trash, has now become a nearby school with two classroom buildings, which in 2008 is providing an education for 150 children, from pre-K up to 8th grade. Children whose highest aspiration used to be driving a trash truck are now dreaming about becoming doctors, lawyers and teachers when they grow up.
The Mosaic community has been blessed by the talents of filmmakers, actors / actresses, writers, photographers, painters, musicians and other artists – and the Awaken Honduras project draws on this talent pool to send a team of professional filmmakers and photojournalists to the trash dump in Tegus to tell the story of the community there. Through a short documentary film and still photos, we will paint a picture of their lives for those who have not visited the trash dump in person. Our goal is to raise awareness about the situation and to raise money for the AFE school - the school currently has a budget shortfall of about $50,000 for 2008.
The Awaken Honduras team will lend its artistic talents to help ensure that AFE survives, thrives and continues to bring hope to these children and their parents. To learn more about the Tegucigalpa trash dump, please click here.
How to Help
The Awaken Honduras team is recruiting partners to help support its efforts to bring hope to communities in need in Honduras. We have partnered with Global Fast to enable our team to raise awareness and financial support. Each team member is personally contributing a substantial portion of the trip cost, but we also have significant financial needs to enable our travel to Honduras in June.
You can support us in 4 principal ways:
1) Commit to fasting or praying (or both) on a weekly basis in support of one of the team members or the whole project. This could be a fast of one meal, one dessert or even giving up your daily coffee once a week. To learn more about fasting, click here
2) Donate the money you would have spent on the meals you fast to cover a portion of a team member’s trip cost (in the form of a tax-deductible donation to Mosaic)
3) Help us cover the material, equipment and production costs associated with the documentary film and photojournalism side of our project. Click here to find out more
4) Spread the word to your network of friends and acquaintances. Consider asking them to join you in fasting, praying and/or supporting the project financially
Support Awaken Honduras
Please provide the following information in order to register your support of Awaken Honduras:
NOTE: Personal information is kept strictly confidential and used for Awaken Honduras purposes only. You will not be added to any unwanted mailing lists or receive unsolicited phone calls
