El Hogar Projects serves as the compassionate and effective solution to the underlying issues of the emigration crisis.
These past few weeks have seen significant and appropriate attention being directed toward the plight of vulnerable migrants crossing the U.S. border. We are seeing unaccompanied children and young mothers fleeing to the U.S. at an unprecedented pace.
Those of you familiar with life in Central America are aware that the conditions that drive this flight are not new. The proportions are higher than before, but this exodus has been a tragic part of the life of the tragically poor for years. In places like Honduras, desperate poverty and violence uproots families and forces decisions that most of us will never have to face. While those who serve in such places are grateful for the increased concern, we are also all too aware of the tendency to “se enfria” or cool off. Our culture has a short attention span and the real solutions take time and patience. It is our plea to you to hold fast to these concerns and work along side us for a long-term solution.
El Hogar Projects plays a vital role in the lives of its most vulnerable children of Honduras. Our work is critical in that we must respond quickly to a variety of circumstances. By definition, however, as an educational institution, we offer preventative care. We build lives that are capable of avoiding the pitfalls that many face as they head to the US border.
Children and young mothers are fleeing Honduras because they have no hope nor any vision of a life offering anything other than violence and hunger. So, while we do what we can on the northern side of our border to create a just and compassionate response toward the unaccompanied children, in the end, these activities do not address the real cause that is the poverty and violence that stems from it which is so present in everyday life in Honduras.
What must happen, is that children who have no hope, who have seen parents gunned down before their own eyes, who are caught in a desperate cycle of poverty, must have hope restored and a new future structured before them. That is the mission of El Hogar.
The work of El Hogar is to lift children out of poverty so they may become productive members of the Honduran community. That is what we do, and we do it well. We give children an education, life skills, and a new sense of hope, such that their future does not depend upon a desperate journey into the wilderness but rests, rather, on a new community formed of loving and caring people; a community that empowers them to create a better life for themselves and their families.
This is the only viable solution to the issues being played out at the U.S. borders. Please stand with El Hogar as we offer this life-giving alternative of hope and restoration to these most vulnerable children and their families.
The following links provide more reading about this complex matter: