Honduras Travel Journal: March 2013

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Beginning to Pack

On March 4th we packed up the donations of toys and clothing that we had received so far to see how much we could fit in one suitcase. We were succesful in stuffing one suticase full with things from playdough to skirts and reached a weight of 47 pounds just under the 50 pound maximum. Currently we are still taking donations of clothes, especially boys clothes and money but we have stopped taking donations of toys. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far. The children are going to love it! Thanks for helping make a difference.

About Our Trip

The Senior Community Service Project is a volunteer service-learning program for all Provincetown High School seniors in good academic standing who may choose to work with a community governmental or a not-for profit entity for a minimum of 45 hours of community service. However, this year I have decided to take the idea of senior project and expand it to a cultural, and language immersion project.

In May I will be traveling to Honduras for three weeks with my former Spanish teacher, Emily Edwards to volunteer with Helping Honduras Kids (HHK) at their orphanage, the Hogar de Amor. I will also be teaching at the Jungle School (a local school). Instead of volunteering locally, I hope to expand my prior experience with Spanish and my love of teaching with this volunteer experience. During my sophomore year of high school Ms. Edwards introduced me to the organization Helping Honduras Kids (HHK). This organization is an orphanage that helps care for abused, abandoned, and neglected children in Honduras. I decided that I wanted to start working with this organization and bring HHK to Provincetown Schools.

This opportunity to bring HHK to Provincetown Schools came about when I started participating in the Internship Program at Provincetown High School. Through internship students are encouraged to explore their interests through community based learning projects. For my internship I had the chance to student teach in the 1^st grade and currently now in the middle school, leading to my desire to be a teacher. Internship has given me the opportunity to connect my love of kids and teaching with my service work for HHK. While student teaching in the first grade I was able to spend a day teaching the students about Honduras. In this day the children learned about the differences and similarities between the United States and Honduras as well as using the Spanish they knew to make a video for the orphanage. Overall the Internship Program has set fire to me wanting to make a difference by helping serve others as well as a way to follow my desire to work with HHK.

With this experience in May as well as my experiences in the internship program I plan to pursue a teaching degree at Roger Williams University in the fall. I hope that as a teacher I have a classroom where I not only teach children the standard reading, writing, and mathematics but also make them aware of the needs of the many people around us and the meaning behind serving and helping others.

As my last project before my trip to Honduras I have begun to collect donations of children’s clothes, small toys, and small household items to bring down to the orphanage when I go. Currently, I am collecting donations of money to send to the HHK orphanage as they have just moved to a new home and are lacking resources to finish it. For more information about this amazing organization you can access the website at http://www.helpinghonduraskids.org.

Honduras Travel Journal

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Sunday, March 10, 2013

Beginning to Pack

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