Parsons USD 503 student Avery Gilmore is participating in many divisions of this year’s Labette County Fair, from sewing to rocketry, but perhaps the project she is most excited about is her exhibit in Civic Engagement, through which she has an adventuresome story to tell. “The Civic Engagement project is designed to help 4-H members find out more about themselves, family, friends, community and world,” K-State Research and Extension explains. “The project will lead to opportunities for meeting people and working with groups” and “learning about other countries and cultures.” Honduras in Central America is presently not a country most people would envision wanting to go to learn about a culture, much less spending their spring break there, but it is precisely the place 9-year-old Avery, her mother Tracy, and her brother Zach, planned to spend a week in March of this year. They were joined by their neighbor Crystal Stover and her daughter Lenex.
The country, surrounded on three sides by Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, would be a popular tourist draw for its Caribbean Sea coastline and Mayan and Spanish history, were it not for the fact it is considered one of the most violent regions in the world, with one of the highest national murder rates in the world. Drug traffickers and large international/transnational organized gangs operate mostly with impunity and travel advisories encourage tourists to reconsider visiting the country.
The Gilmore’s reasons for going though were not for personal pleasure, but rather charitable.
Mrs. Gilmore was scared to go and strongly questioned taking her children into the region but was reassured time and again they would be safe where they were going. “The organization is called Friends of Los Ninos. My friend from high school who lives in Austin, Texas is a member of the board, and she works a lot with this orphanage. She helps manage it and gets sponsorships for all the children. She takes four trips a year with groups of people to go down to help the orphanage,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “She said, ‘We have built 100 houses for the people in this city.’ And she said, ‘Everywhere you go in this city, people are so thankful for what our organization has done and how we’ve helped the children. …I promise you, the people in this village will not let anything happen to us. They will fight to their death for us.’ “We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time and finally, we just said ‘We’re going to do it.’”
They packed their bags, each taking a backpack for all their own personal items, and then two large pieces of checked luggage containing items to donate to the orphanage. Avery said she chose dental hygiene items to take, like toothbrushes and toothpaste. Others in the party brought other items like hygiene products, first aid kits, clothes, shoes, and school supplies.
People in Honduras are among the poorest in Central America, with a majority living in extreme poverty.
Avery pulled out her notebook for the fair, containing her typed story and pages of photos to share with others her experience in Honduras.
The minute she got out of the van the first day arriving at the Copreme Orphanage in El Progreso, Avery made a friend, as a girl immediately came up and hugged her. It is that girl, Rachell, age 10, who Avery decided to sponsor.
The outside of the orphanage was painted in bright colors and the inside was clean, though sparse in furnishings, toys or other items. About 42 children are housed there presently.
“They have massive power outages a lot and it is very hot of course. They struggle keeping food cold and they have a lot of spoilage. Of course, the orphanage is operating on a shoestring budget,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “Almost everything they have comes from the United States to support the orphanage. Showing the pictures in her exhibit book, Avery talked about some of the various activities they were able to do with the orphans during their week-long visit.
One night, those children who had sponsors were able to go out to a restaurant to eat. It is when Avery and her mom learned of some of the children’s back stories and other aspects of the organization playing a part in helping the children. “A lot of these kids have severe eating problems because they grew up impoverished, eating dirt and rocks to survive,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “Some of the children were very nervous and sick to their stomachs, because they couldn’t imagine going to a place to eat.”
“There was a malnutrition center there. There was a girl, a little bit shorter than me, who was 16,” Avery said.
“I would see kids and think they were four and they were nine, with white hair and red eyes,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “The malnutrition center was magical though because there is a lot of brain deficiencies they face, and they had such joy. We played and played with the children.”
Avery said while at the nutrition center, they packaged around 100 bags of beans and rice for the families of the town of El Progreso.
“They are so thankful for everything,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “Every grain of rice is a blessing. It was absolutely renewing for the soul.”
Avery said they also visited the tutoring centers while there. School only takes place for half a day, about every other day, so Friends of Los Ninos established tutoring centers to help supplement the children’s education.
Another night there, they spent hours making hundreds of peanut butter sandwiches to hand out to people in the village. A different day, Avery said, she and the other children made friendship bracelets.
As the days passed, the Gilmore’s learned the heart wrenching stories of how some of the children came to be in the orphanage. It is there though, that they have a chance at life.
“This organization really strives to stop the cycle of poverty. When the kids get out, they don’t have families. All they have is each other and the people they have known in the orphanage. If they are able, then this organization tries to help them go to the university and supports them through this process, so they don’t fall into the lines of drugs and gangs,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “So this organization continues to help these kids, even after they age out.” Mrs. Gilmore said the young lady she is sponsoring, Belkies, who is 17, is getting ready to age out, but she is hoping to sponsor Belkies to go on to the university, if she wants to go.
“A lot of the children who age-out or go to university will come back to the orphanage to help or lead tour groups,” Mrs. Gilmore said.
It’s $50 a month to sponsor a child at the orphanage. Avery said she is personally sponsoring a child. To sponsor Rachell, Avery said she uses money from her bank account. She also sacrifices her own snacks at home, to have the money to contribute.
To go along with her exhibit notebook, Avery also created a display board. She placed it on her kitchen counter with the help of her mom. Mrs. Gilmore pointed to a picture of a cemetery and explained only those who could afford the monthly plot rental could be buried there. If a family quits paying the plot rent, the operator of the cemetery will dig up the bodies and haul them up to the mountain and dispose of them. Other pictures on the board were of people, and the houses in the village, most constructed of random pieces of bent, rusted, corrugated metal patched together and wooden poles.
“The people used to live on the mountain and then the government came and took away their land and moved them down so they became squatters. When they became squatters, they would get this tin and build whatever they could. A lot of people lived in cardboard houses. Then two years ago a flood came through and just destroyed everything they had built, so they had to start over and start over with the housing project,” Mrs. Gilmore said. Avery pointed to a photo of a small house made of concrete blocks. It is one of the 100 the orphanage’s sponsors have helped to build in the village. Once home, Avery committed to the decision to sponsor construction of one of the concrete block houses in the village. Each house costs $5,000 to build.
Avery went to work to raise funds this summer. She, with the help of her mom, held a bake sale downtown. She has made sand necklaces to sell and sold books. She also helped set up a wedding and clean up afterwards. With the help of a generous sponsor willing to match what people raised through June for the orphanage, Avery has reached almost $3,000. They are hopeful to meet their goal of $5,000 before their next trip to Honduras.
“When we go in March, they are going to do a dedication to the house that you paid for, and you get to help dedicate it for the family,” Mrs. Gilmore told Avery. Avery pointed to another photo on the board that was taken through the window of a van of children waving at them. As the Gilmores and Stovers headed out to return home, Mrs. Gilmore said the children of the orphanage followed the van all the way to the edge of town, their hands touching the hands of their departing friends through the glass, and then forming hearts in the air as the van pulled away. There were no dry eyes. “The people were amazing,” Mrs. Gilmore said. “They were so kind, and we bonded with them so quickly. We can’t wait to go back. We’re going back in March and we’re going to make this an annual thing. We formed incredible friendships with the kids in the orphanage, and the people in the village.”
Mrs. Gilmore said they recently sent letters down with another mission group and they were surprised Saturday to receive return handwritten letters from their children in the orphanage. They used a translator app to read them. Hoping to one day be able to read the letters herself, and speak more easily with the people of Honduras, Avery is now using Duo Lingo to learn Spanish.
She is hoping her civic engagement 4-H project earns her another purple ribbon at this year’s fair, but she is more hopeful to see her newfound friends again soon and to dedicate a new house for a family there.
“I’m excited to get to go back,” Avery said.
Questions regarding this article can be directed to USD 503 Director of Public Relations Colleen Williamson at colleenwilliamson@vikingnet.net or (620)820-1408.