ABC Honduras
Who we are
ABC Honduras is a non for profit organization first founded in France by Kirsten Schulte and Martine Kirtz in May 1999 to join reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Mitch. The foundation started operating in Honduras in 2,000 with Anaité Seibt and Jean Marie Laurent. ABC Honduras legally exists in Honduras since 2006.
All our funds are channelled towards the children. Except for the teachers, the cook, and occasional qualified maintenance, our staff are all volunteers.
What we do
We support the human right to a basic education
No developed nation exists without a solid educational system that ensures that talents and know how are furthered for the progress of the country. In Honduras the access to basic education is still rather frail, especially in rural areas, resulting in the marginalization of its population left with very few options to generate income other than through traditional agricultural slash and burn practices or migration to either bigger cities in Honduras or to the north.
We believe that an improved level of education opens opportunities to alternative jobs and thus income and a better quality of life. It also enhances the possibilities for the next generation of parents to send their children to school, becoming hence a virtuous cycle for development.
Primary School
This is why, with the help of committed parents and concerned sponsors, both individual and institutional, upon the request of the rural target population, ABC Honduras has built from scratch a rural school called "Escuela República de Francia" in the Cangrejal river watershed in the community of El Susco, close to La Ceiba, on the Caribbean coast of Honduras.
Children, teachers and volunteers had to cross the river every day on a log raft or on a donkey’s back. All primary school grades were taught from first to 6th grade and the children were provided not only with a very friendly school setting and a teacher, but with all the necessary materials such as uniforms, backpacks, books, notebooks etc. and daily warm meals.
Due to the project for the construction of a hydroelectric damn which did not materialize, the inhabitants of the community of El Susco, for which the school was built, abandoned their homes, thus making it necessary to move the school to the other side of the river Cangrejal, to the community El Portillo.
High School
Another challenge, of course, was the fact that our children grew up, making it adamant that we ensure high school education as well. Thus an alliance was made with various high schools in the Cangrejal river watershed of which the strongest is to → Colegio El Rey in the community of Río Viejo.
We can now proudly say that we are beginning to graduate our first students from high school.
We support teenager’s human right to reproductive health
We believe that the first step for teenagers to make informed and responsible decisions and to recognize their rights about their reproductive health and sex, is access to information. The public education system in Honduras does not provide this valuable input which is also key to health risk prevention, specially with regards to sexually transmitted diseases, including Aids. Instead, it is left to a overburdened public health system to provide information, when it is often already too late and an unwanted pregnancy is carried out or interrupted or when sexually transmitted infectionsare treated instead of prevented. →statistics.
ABC Honduras, with the help of the international Swedish cooperation, specifically developed the following products for teenagers who seek information on reproductive health, sex and risk prevention. The development process was accompanied by experts of the Ministry of Public Health, the system of the United Nations (UNDP, WHO,
UNIFEM,
UNICEF, UPC) Medical Association, and many others whose comments and observation made this work what it is today. Special attention was paid to the observations of parents and teenagers themselves who expressed interest in the topic and specified particular wishes for information and even illustrations. The material consists of:
hear scene 1
