Information
Where does Las Sonrisas de los Ninos work:
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Las Sonrisas de los Ninos
Brewton, Honduras
Overview of Las Sonrisas de los Niños
We (Reid and Patricia, retired, from the US) operate a small charity project near the poor village of El Cacao in rural Honduras, Central America, called Las Sonrisas de los Niños. Our goal is to provide the youth in our area opportunities beyond what they might normally experience. This includes play and recreation, nutritional support, reading, exposure and instruction in English, music, and overall a chance for kids to act like kids. We are somewhat a mix of a day care center and youth center, and the ages of the kids that attend range from infancy to teens.
A main emphasis of our project is volunteerism. It is absolutely wonderful watching these poor kids meet, develop relationships and friendships, and learn so much from our volunteers. And it is equally amazing seeing the volunteers respond to the kids. We have had volunteers from the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, the UK, Denmark, and Ireland, ranging in ages from the pre-teens to the almost 80. We’ve had individuals, groups of friends, and whole families. In many cases volunteers have kept in touch with the kids or our local employees long past the time they were there, and many times volunteers have returned to renew their relationships and experiences- the current record is 10 trips. We try to make volunteering as easy as possible, with no applications or fees (we do maintain and offer hostel type housing for $25 a week, which seems to be pretty popular), and volunteers have been with us for a few days to 5 months.
We typically operate Mon. through Fri. 8:30am to 4pm. Since we opened in May 2007 we have run the project in "sessions," i.e. we’ll be in operation for 4-5 months, then close down for several months in order to live our US life (rest, visit friends and family, work on our small house and land in southern Alabama, etc). We would like to have more continuity, which prompted us to consider trying out what we termed on-site managers in our absence. This was never brought to fruition for a number of reasons, but our goal remains. Hence we have posted a request for operating partners, perhaps a retired couple that has been looking for a meaningful challenge and has the financial wherewithal to run the project in our absence.
In the summer of 2009, totally unrelated to our presence, a Canadian group called Adventure in Missions opened a needed clinic in the village of El Cacao. We of course came to know each other and in the spring of 2010 they expressed an interest in trying their hand at running their version of our project using our facilities. As we closed out session 5 in October 2010 we handed them the keys and they have been active since then (this being written in May 2011). We will be returning towards the end of this month to open session 6 and we'll look forward to learning in person of their experience.
We have a few additional goals for session 6. We now have two sewing machines courtesy volunteers from session 5 and hope to form a viable co-op for some of the older girls and local women. We also plan to purchase an industrial weed-whacker and form a co-op for some of the young men around that. Lawns like we are accustomed to in the US are uncommon in Honduras but rather in order for land to be usable it has to be constantly cleared, and this provides a significant livelihood for those few that can afford a weed-whacker (typically called a Shindawa in our part of Honduras). Machetes are often used but are very labor intensive and time consuming and power lawn-mowers are rarely seen and not efficacious for coarser land, so heavy-duty weed-whackers are the most viable and variable tool. Lastly we plan to (finally) offer instruction in carpentry, allowing those interested to build something useful- a shelf, table, stool, etc- while learning the basics.
Thank you for your interest and if you have any questions or want further information, feel free to contact us.
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Partner Needs
As mentioned above, in addition to volunteers we continue our search for what we are calling operating partners, perhaps a retired or missionary minded couple that has been looking for a meaningful challenge and has the financial wherewithal to run the project in our absence.
Financial Needs
We do not solicit donations but are happy to receive them and have been fortunate that the vast majority of donations have come from volunteers or visitors. We have to date always covered our operating expenses with donations- we use donated money only for operating expenses that include wages to our locally hired employees, food and milk for project, electricity and cooking gas at the project, activity supplies,a and misc. expenses such as taking kids to the clinic.