Helping Hands for Honduras

Los Laureles is a community of nearly 500 people that live in and around the municipal garbage dump of La Ceiba, Honduras. Many families sustain themselves in some way off of the collection or recycling of La Ceiba's trash, many more have one or more members of their family working as day-laborers around the city. The people of Los Laureles are hard-working and hard-scrabble. Over the past 35 years they have managed to slowly pull themselves out of abject poverty and into some semblance of economic stability; some of the youth of Laureles are currently in university studying law and engineering. Despite their modest gains though, most families still survive on only about $4.00 a day, have no savings and absolutely depend on the weekly income of the bread-winners for survival. On March 16th, the Honduran government, in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19, shut down all non-essential businesses and issued a shelter-in-place directive in the city of La Ceiba. The families of Los Laureles that depend on their weekly incomes for survival, have been without work since that time - many have run out of food and quite a few have resorted to picking through the city garbage dump in order to feed their family.

Our goal, as friends of this community, is to raise the necessary funds to ensure that each family in Los Laureles has the basic food supply available to them for the duration of this economic shutdown. Funds will be used to purchase food and hygiene products from bodega owners from within the Los Laureles community as a method for sustaining their businesses during this economic crisis. Each family will then receive a weekly allotment of groceries commensurate to the number of members in that household. This method of food distribution will last for as long as the economy remains locked down and will halt as soon as the people of Los Laureles are able to return to their places of employment. If for any reason we have more funds than needed e.g. if the shutdown order is lifted sooner rather than later - we will donate all surplus monies to a local orphanage.

Thank you for your consideration of this project and for remembering the most vulnerable among us