Is it Safe to Travel to Honduras?    

I'm not asked this question very often at all, simply because I believe people don't want to sound rude. But I also believe this question crosses the mind of anyone whom we invite to travel to Honduras with us. The short answer is "Yes, it's safe". I've made more than two dozen trips to Honduras - even taking my wife Tracy on one trip with me and all three of our kids on three separate trips before that. I never would have taken my entire family to an unsafe country. All four of them want to go back with me sometime - although work schedules and available PTO tend to complicate that - because they all felt perfectly safe the entire time we were in Honduras.

The problem is that the US State Department issues Travel Warnings each year involving a total of 126 countries - all ranging from Level 1 alerts (Exercise Standard Precautions) to a Level 4 (Do Not Travel). Honduras appears on the list as a Level 3 (Reconsider Travel To) country. We find this puzzling because we have never experienced any crime-related or violence-related problems on any trip we've ever hosted to Honduras over the past 21 years. The issues related to crime and violence in Honduras are concentrated in the far northern region of the country along the Caribbean coast, along with the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Our operational area is the extreme south of Honduras near the Pacific Ocean.

NOTE: These State Department Travel Advisories regarding Honduras are not new. Honduras has typically always had pockets of trouble areas, just as the US and Europe do, but none relating to the specific areas where L4L operates or where we travel with our guests.

In fact, if you read any online article regarding crime and violence in Honduras, you'll notice that every article will reference the northern coastal areas - including the cities of San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, and Roatan in addition to the capital of Tegucigalpa in central Honduras - while none of them ... absolutely none ... mentions the Valle Department (district) in Southern Honduras where L4L operates in relation to any problems with crime or violence. The area where L4L operates is never mentioned at all in these articles.

Now that the international airport has been moved out of the city of Tegucigalpa northwest to the city of Comayagua, we never travel in or through the capital city at all.

For example: Most people who live in Georgia live in very safe, low-crime areas - but they stay away from certain areas in cities like Atlanta, Macon, and Albany because of crime. The same is true for cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and many others. If you travel to those states, you stay away from the areas where you might meet trouble. The same is true for Honduras. Our operational area is hundreds of miles away from the crime-ridden northern coast and nearly 100 miles away from the capital of Tegucigalpa.

We invite all L4L supporters to consider traveling to Honduras with us to witness the impact of the school lunch program on the remote, desperately poor communities of the Valle Department in southern Honduras. If you would love to make a trip, but you are concerned about the safety aspect, I hope you will contact me so that we can discuss your concerns. I can personally assure you that the generalized alerts you might see relative to Honduras are relevant to areas that are hundreds of miles away from the area you will be visiting. 

And the main reason why we invite you to consider visiting Honduras with us is because these trips allow you to witness first-hand the impact of the L4L program on the children in these remote, rural communities. You get to see the smiling faces of the kids whose lives are literally being transformed by the school lunch program - allowing them to remain in school and learn their way to a better future - all because of the generosity of our L4L supporters.



Phil Dodson
Executive Director
phil.dodson@lunchesforlearning.org

Planned Gifts Honoring Our Founder's Legacy 

We are pleased to officially announce the creation of The Ron Hicks Fellowship - a recognition society for the individuals who have established planned gifts to benefit Lunches for Learning. Named for our beloved Founder, The Ron Hicks Fellowship reflects Ron's commitment to and enduring support for the children of rural southern Honduras. 

Any Lunches for Learning supporter may join The Fellowship by establishing any form of planned gift to benefit L4L. No minimum gift is required for membership. All planned gifts, when received, will be added to our Endowed Fund, the proceeds from which will be allocated to growing the L4L program in Honduras for many years into the future. Adding your name to the roster of Fellowship members allows you to be recognized now for a gift that will be received by L4L at some point in the future. 

The simplest and most common form of planned gift is a bequest in a Will or Living Trust, but other types of planned gifts can be viewed on our Other Ways to Give page. Some gifts can actually provide income to both you and L4L during your retirement years, all while making a lasting impact on the Ron Hicks legacy and the precious children of rural southern Honduras for years to come.                    

Have you ever considered what it would be like if you had to walk for an hour each morning across a rugged mountain road just to attend school for the day, only to be faced with having to walk another hour at the end of the school day to get home? Or what if you had to send your kids to school on an empty stomach each morning because you had no food? For the kids of rural Honduras, this is their reality every day. Honduras is among the poorest nations in the world with much of the population living below the poverty level, earning less than $2 per day. However, statistics show that a child who earns at least a sixth grade education has hope for breaking the cycle of poverty because he or she will learn basic reading, writing and math skills that open future doors. This is the foundation of the Lunches for Learning mission.

      

Lunches for Learning exists to break the cycle of poverty in rural Honduras by providing a healthy lunch to school children every school day at their school; thereby allowing these children to stay in school so they can complete their education and enter the workforce as literate individuals.

If you would like to make a difference in the lives of these kids in Honduras, we invite you to consider becoming a school sponsor. Our School Sponsorship page will explain more, or you can contact us to discuss what a school sponsorship involves - including opportunities to support a specific group of kids and develop long-term, on-going partnerships with the community you - or your organization - support as a sponsor.

Sometimes, significant decisions are made when they are least expected. In 2004, Ron Hicks was presented with an extraordinary choice while on a trip through central America. Waiting for a border crossing between El Salvador and Honduras, Ron experienced first-hand a multitude of poverty stricken children. One little nine-year-old girl happened to make eye contact while begging for money and she became the catalyst of a series of choices made by Ron. It was a moment that created a movement.

Times were hard for this child, just as they continue to be for many children in this poor, rural region in Southern Honduras. When you come from a household of hungry people, you have to beg, and this little girl was begging at the border crossing into El Salvador for her and her family. There is not a lot of hope in this environment. Most people who travel this road are in a hurry to get somewhere else. Many become hardened by the poverty and suffering. Ron Hicks passed through, gave her a couple of coins, and moved on. But Ron was haunted by her memory.

Ron returned home to the United States, still struggling with his choice to turn this little girl away. He began to think about what to do and concluded that his only choice was to return to Honduras, cross the border in the same location and try to find this little girl. He didn't know yet how he could help her, but he was determined to find a way.

After a great deal of effort, he returned to Honduras and located this child and her family living in a small shack in El Amatillo, Honduras. This little girl's name is Anabel (pronounced "Annabelle"). He spoke with the family and Anabel herself through an interpreter and soon learned the families in this rural town were also faced with a choice – the choice to either send their children to the streets, begging for money so they could buy food, or to send them to school for an education and hope for the future, but with an empty stomach because there was no money to feed them.

With a sense of optimism and the help of Messiah Lutheran Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Lunches for Learning began its mission to break the cycle of poverty in this forgotten part of Central America. Lunches for Learning helped Anabel find a way back to elementary school by providing her and her classmates a nourishing lunch at school. From this small act of encouragement, hope has grown.

Anabel's school was the first school to receive lunches through the Lunches for Learning program. Anabel, like hundreds of students since, completed her education - with the help of Lunches for Learning - and graduated. She is now an independent young woman, living and working in her home town of El Amatillo with a bright future ahead of her.

The Lunches for Learning program was created in 2004 and incorporated in 2005 as a 501(c)(3) and with it, a tradition of hope, empowerment and dignity arose. Today more than 2,000 children are fed a nutritious lunch at 51 rural kindergarten, elementary and middle schools in the Valle District of Honduras. With the strength of God and the support of strategic partners, Lunches for Learning hopes to continue breaking the cycle of poverty in rural Honduras.

Phil Dodson, Executive Director
Phil Dodson joined the Lunches for Learning team as Executive Director in 2016. His previous experience included serving as Development Director for North Georgia United Methodist Camp & Retreat Ministries in Atlanta from 2006 to 2016. As a 1986 graduate of LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, Phil began his career in higher education, serving three different colleges in the Admission and Financial Aid arena. In 1997, he transitioned to the credit and financial services industry where he served in Client Relations roles with Total System Services in Columbus, Georgia, and Transunion in Atlanta before returning to the nonprofit sector in 2006 with North Georgia Camp & Retreat Ministries. Phil and his wife Tracy live in Cleveland, Georgia. They have three adult children: Megan, age 26; Mia, age 24; and Jimmy, age 21.


Mary Lou Monaghan, Operations Administrator
Mary Lou (ML) joined the Lunches for Learning team as Operations Administrator in 2015 after serving as a Senior Manager, Government Affairs, and Association Manager at National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) for 16 years. ML earned her Business Management degree from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and the University of West Florida in Pensacola. She is originally from Buffalo, NY, and now resides in Alpharetta, GA. She can be contacted directly at 678.232.7941 or click on her photo to send her an email. ML is pictured with her family; son DJ, daughter-in-law Megan (center), grandson Logan, daughter Amanda (left), and daughter Kaitlin (right). ML also has a new granddaughter Elizabeth Rose (not pictured yet).



Ramón Romero, Manager of Honduran Operations
Ramón currently serves as general manager of the Honduras operations. He is a teacher by profession and even spent 15 years as a teacher at a Lunches for Learning school, Romulo Alvarado in the El Caragual community. He also serves as an English professor at the National Pedagogical University in Nacaome during the evenings each week. Ramón holds a Master's degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua. After serving as a teacher in an L4L-sponsored school, Ramón has seen the impact of the L4L program first-hand. He was already teaching at Romulo Alvarado when the L4L program came to the school in 2013, so he witnessed the increased enrollment, improved health, and enhanced learning ability of the students there as they began receiving daily nutritious lunches. The increased enrollment allowed the school to eventually add 7th, 8th and 9th grades, which dramatically expanded the students' educational opportunities.

Ramón and his wife Angie are pictured here with their three children Stefania (15), Heysel (6), and Ian (20 months).


Jessica Gonzalez, Manager of External Relations, Honduras
Jessica studied at Jose Cecilio del Valle University in Tegucigalpa. Jessica attended elementary school at the Andrea Gonzalez Elementary School in El Amatillo, which is the very first school in the Lunches for Learning school lunch program. Jessica has worked with Lunches for Learning over the years in a variety of capacities, which include translating during business appointments and administrative assistant duties. Jessica understands first-hand how important Lunches for Learning is for the children in Honduras and is so proud to be part of this amazing program that is helping the children of Honduras to have a better future.

This photo shows Jessica with her husband Cesar and their three children Cesar Issac (18), Daniela Ivonne (15), and Angely Gabriela (11).


Juniors Ortiz, Honduran Operations Supervisor
Juniors (pronounced "Junior") was born in Tegucigalpa and moved with his parents to Nacaome, in the Valle Department, at the age of two. He continues to live in Nacaome as do his mother and younger siblings. He received his primary education in a bilingual school, Jose Trinidad Cabañas. He studied through ninth grade in the Technical department of the Terencio Sierra school in Nacaome, then obtained his Technical Bachelor's degree in Computing in Choluteca. Juniors is proud to be a part of this incredible program that is providing a better future for his fellow citizens in the Valle region of Honduras.

Juniors is pictured here with his fiancée Isis and their 1-year-old son Lucas.



 

The Lunches for Learning Team

June of 2019 was the first time our entire team had been together in Honduras in quite a while.
It seemed an appropriate time for a team photo.
Front row, left to right, are Juniors Ortiz, Mary Lou Monaghan, and Phil Dodson.
Back row, left to right, are Jessica Gonzalez and Ramón Romero.