Organizations

Children have opportunities to get help from the many organizations. However, because some of these organizations ask for long-term commitment and are religiously affiliated, children view them with suspicion. They do not like anything having to do with reform, institutions or the government. They often choose to stay on the streets instead of getting help.

Some organizations:

Casa Alianza Honduras
This organization has 4 basic programs:

street outreach:
helps the children of and on the street by providing them with medical care, education, and counseling.
crisis center:
provides children with shelter, medical treatment, education, and food.
transition homes:
give them a temporary home (on average 4 months).
group homes:
provide children with education. They live with a surrogate family of about 14 boys or girls. They leave the house after their 18th birthday or after they have finished their education.

Orphanage Emmanuel
This mission takes care of Honduran orphans and abandoned children. It provides them with a permanent home and essential needs. It also gives each child a Christian schooling with formal education and training. The goal of the orphanage is for each child to leave as an adult as an efficient partner of society.

Mision Caribe
This Christian mission provides help by sending equipment to hospitals, and food and clothes for the orphans, street children, and day cares. They also build houses for those who have lost theirs.

Honduras Outreach
This Christian ministry attempts to improve water quality, sanitation, health, and agriculture and promote both health and formal education.

Vermont-Honduras Partnership
This organization has many different projects. Some main ones focus on:

training in job skills
health
education for children with special needs
construction of houses
preparation for natural disasters

Proyecto Alternativo
This organization only lasted two years. The project provided street and market children with:
- health education
- primary health care
- nutrition program
  informal activities
It was based in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. There were 6 different sites where 2 street educators (interviewers) and a clinical team (rotating one day a week at each location) were set up. These sites were situated in the streets and in markets where most children lived and worked.

Information for this page came from the following sources:

Casa Alianza. 2002. "Welcome to Casa Alianza". Retrieved October 2002 (http://www.casa-alianza.org/EN/index-en.shtml).

Honduras Outreach. 2002. "Honduras Outreach, Inc.". Retrieved November 15th, 2002 ( http://www.hoi.org/ ).

Mision Caribe. 2000. "Mision Caribe". Retrieved November 15th, 2002 ( http://www.misioncaribe.com/ ).

Orphanage Emmanuel. 2002. "Orphanage Emmanuel, Guaimaca, Honduras". Retrieved November 15th, 2002 ( http://www.dialog.dk/~fjordbak/emmanuel/ ).

Vermont Honduras Partners of the Americas. 2002. "Vermont Honduras Partners of the Americas Calendar". Retrieved November 15th, 2002 ( http://crs.uvm.edu/partners/poa.html ).

Wittig, Martha. 1994. "Culture of Poverty or Ghetto Underclass?: Women and Children on the Streets of Honduras." Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA.

Wittig, Martha, James D. Wright, and Donald C. Kaminsky. 1997. "Substance Use among Street Children in Honduras." Substance Use and Misuse 32: 805-827.

Wright, James D., Donald C. Kaminsky, and Martha Wittig. 1993. "Health and Social Conditions of Street Children in Honduras." American Journal of Diseases of Children 147: 279-283.

Wright, James D., Martha Wittig, and Donald C. Kaminsky. 1993. "Street Children in North and Latin America: Preliminary Data from the Proyecto Alternativos in Tegucigalpa and Some Comparisons with the U.S. Case." Studies in Comparative International Development 28, 2: 81-92.

Wright, James D., Martha Wittig, and Donald C. Kaminsky.1995. "Acute and Chronic Morbidity among Street Children in Honduras and the United States". Presented at Nobody's Children: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Child Abandonment, September 28-30, University of Durham, England.

This website was created by Chrystelle Zweidler, Jeremy Hall, and Michael Lewis.

This is a project for Prof. April Brayfield’s Children and Society, a first year English writing seminar at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. We are not, nor claim to be, experts on Honduras. This project was completed with limited resources and in a limited time frame.