This is about supporting organized communities in Honduras to build dignified lives, with food security, and with no need to migrate to an uncertain future in a foreign land. It is a request to help cover the costs of motivated, social justice committed low-resourced members of the SHARE Foundation delegation, “Vamos a la Milpa” (“let’s go to the cornfield” – the place of life and sustenance) this July 2-12 in Honduras, that I will be participating in.  The focus will be on visiting, and participating with, communities that have come together, to rebuild and plant anew after last year’s hurricanes to become strong sustainable communities. We will be a demonstration of moral, physical, and political solidarity and support to families and communities in the midst of food insecurity and a far from controlled pandemic in a country where, instead of receiving needed aid from their government, they are persecuted because they make injustices and greedy acts of environmental destruction known. Yet they continue forward, with determination.

My involvement in this reflects how I come to be inspired by, and be led by, individuals, communities, and organizations, that rise up from the margins, to seek common good, peace, and justice in their lives, their lands, and across borders, and who also allow me to enter into relationship with them and to walk with them. With my life, in recent years, being in Central America (especially El Salvador) almost as much as in Washington, DC, my identity, my place in this world, has been expanded and I am honored to be known equally as “Paul” and “Pablo.” From this comes my inspiration, along with being out and about in the out-of-doors, enjoying the earth and seeking to live responsibly upon it.

I am now on a bicycle journey, mostly camping out, having from my home in Washington, DC, up through the watershed of the Potomac River, over the Allegheny Mountains, then alongside various rivers until arriving at where the Ohio River begins, in Pittsburgh, PA. I am now on my journey home, still by bike, and will have traveled at least 693 miles by the time I get there. This will be the longest ride I have ever done. That amounts to 11 miles for each of the 63 years of my life. I am asking that you sponsor me, with the contributions made going to a scholarship fund to enable motivated low-resource people, some friends of mine,  to go on the delegation. I am covering all covering all my expenses on this trip, and am paying the greater part of those of traveling to Honduras and participating in the delegation.

Possible contributions could be $6.93 (a penny per mile),  $69.30 (a dime a mile), $173.25 (a quarter a mile), $11, or $63. Any amount will be gratefully received!

I didn’t put out this appeal ahead of time because I honestly wasn’t sure my body would be up for it, and  thought I might have to return home after a day or two. However, I am treating myself gently and, several days out, amazingly, I am doing fine.

Our Honduran hosts, Jesuit priest Padre Melo, and Sister Rosa Maria, have a saying, “with the embrace of the peoples, we will overcome fears.” Please help us join together with them and their communities so that, in knowing and supporting one another, their/our hopes may become more real. 

We will be doing follow up, in the U.S., in September.

Warm embraces,

       Paul/Pablo