Honduras. A lovely country. Central America. The country has taken my heart with storm. Its completely amazing, and every person who haven’t gone yet, should pack his/hers bags right away and go.
Despite the beautiful nature, the friendly people and the historical ancient monuments, Honduras is among the poorest countries in Central America.
According to the International Monetary Fund, and The World Bank, Honduras has a GDP (PPP) pr capita on less than 300 dollars. This puts Honduras nr 126 in the world, and the second poorest in the entire Americas.
The political situation doesn’t look good either. The corruption is 2,6 on the international corruption index, from 0-10, where 10 means absolutely no corruption; further more a high unemployment and a high crime rate is pulling the country in the wrong direction.
But more important; people seem have lost faith in the fact, that there can be done something. A new government recently won the election, and since the government took over, the crime rate has only raised, while the employment rate has gone down.
People don’t believe in democracy. People don’t know about democracy.
Even though Honduras is a world away from Sierra Leone, and other developing countries on the African continent, they are still suffering from poverty, starvation and insecurity. But the solutions in each case are different. Here in Honduras most people go to school, unfortunately they just don’t learn anything, since the teachers aren’t either smart, or interested in teaching.
The country is “lucky” in the sense that it haven’t suffered from civil war or war with occupational powers, neither is their big internal struggles when it comes to religion or cultural identity. Furthermore the country is extremely fertile, where the seed of a flower is planted, a tree will spire. It’s amazing. The key issue lays in the people understandable lack of faith in democracy and the government. As a Honduran explained to me the other day, while talking about the subject “Poverty breeds poverty, if people are poor they don’t think they can ever become rich, so they don’t see any reason even trying”
It’s a long-term process, but we have to stress the importance of good solid education to all people. Democracy can’t work if people aren’t educated to live with it, and that needs to be done. And only through solid education, and hard work we can give people their faith back.
After having learned all this from my experiences in Honduras, I even more begin to understand the importance of GMin. All around the World there are countries in poor conditions, with high crime, bad education, big unemployment, much corruption etc.
But each country has to be worked with in its own way.
First of all due to cultural differences, second because different countries have different reason for being the situations they are in.
"The Faces of Poverty..."
With GMin we can establish a network that support each other, help each other and motivate each other – yet realizing that what works to help Sierra Leone raise from poverty, might not help Honduras to do likewise. Therefore a similar task handling would be unfavorable.
We need to see different action in order to solve similar problems. Each lock has its own key. Before, people have thought that one single key, could open all locks, but we have to realize that the lock of poverty needs different keys, even thought the lock might be the same.
Every person can make a difference, doesn’t matter how small it is. But if we all make a little difference, we’ve made a major contribution. So if every person makes a small contribution, collectively we could make a great leap towards what we are all striving for. A better tomorrow for all of us.
