A bathroom for Fatima’s school in Honduras

27 donors

$2,220 raised of $5K

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A bathroom for Fatima’s school in Honduras

Co-organized

Laura Blume and Jeffrey Griffin are organizing this fundraiser.

Summary

Fatima is a Honduran primary school teacher. She has over 40 students in her class in a building that has no restroom facilities of any kind.

Why is this an urgent problem?

The schoolhouse where Fatima works in Puerto Lempira, Honduras has no bathroom or restroom facilities of any kind. Fatima has endured chronic UTIs and developed kidney issues because of having to resist the urge to use a restroom in order to teach at this school for years. She has had to leave the schoolhouse to find a public restroom or return to her home (which is over 10 minutes away by motorcycle). In addition to this being extremely inconvenient, it means whenever she must leave to get to a restroom, she must dismiss her class since she has no teaching assistant or other adult support and cannot leave 40 five and six-year-olds unsupervised for 20 minutes.

Why is it so expensive?

Puerto Lempira, which is the capital city of the department of Gracias a Dios, is not connected to the rest of Honduras by road. The only way to reach the city or access most of the department is by plane or boat. This means that the only way to get anything into the department, including very heavy building supplies such as cement, come in on boats. This leads to construction (and almost everything) being far more expensive in Gracias a Dios compared to the rest of Honduras. The estimated cost of the materials and labor to construct a bathroom in Fatima’s schoolhouse is $5000.

Why isn’t the Honduran government paying for this?

The department of Gracias a Dios, Honduras is often considered the “forgotten” department of Honduras. It has been historically and continues to be today one of the most socio-economically and politically marginalized places in Honduras. The majority (over 80%) of the population is Indigenous (making them an ethnic minority in the country), which has fueled systematic government neglect of the region. In rural areas throughout Honduras, “one of every five Hondurans lives below the poverty line on around $1.90 per day.” However, in Gracias a Dios, 89.4% of the population live below the poverty line. The department has also been one of the most devastated by the militarized War on Drugs efforts in Central America (see more here: https://nacla.org/combating-narcos-or-criminalizing-indigeneity-honduras).

Why should we help Fatima?

In Gracias a Dios, primary school teachers like Fatima usually have to buy their own school materials out of their extremely low salaries (Fatima earns around $400 USD a month and has 4 children). Most days, a majority of her students come to class having had at most 1 meal in the last 24 hours and thus being unable to focus due to hunger. Fatima brings snacks and candies to her class daily to keep malnourished children awake as they learn crucial lessons like how to hold a pencil and write their names. Fatima deserves to be able to focus on her already very challenging and emotionally demanding job and not be stressed or sacrificing her own health due to the lack of a restroom in her schoolhouse.