TH Helps Honduran President

October 30, 2011

Even though Honduras’ spending on education proportional to GDP is among the highest in all Latin America, the results its public education produces are among the worst in the region. Honduran children on average receive only 120 days of class each year, even though the law calls for 200.

ASJ (formerly known as AJS)-supported anti-corruption movement Transformemos Honduras has brought attention to problems plaguing Honduras’ public education system, such as illegal pay bonuses and corrupt hiring practices, and sought to counteract these ills by auditing teacher placement exams and recruiting parents to track the number of days of class their children receive.

Last fall TH also brought attention to an International Development Bank (IDB) report highlighting the negative consequences of intractable conflicts between teachers’ unions and the Honduran government that have resulted in Honduran students receiving far fewer days of class than their peers in other countries. At least once a year for the past 15 years in Honduras there has been an educational crisis in which teachers go on strike demanding a variety of benefits and children cannot go to classes. This is a chronic problem that neither teachers’ unions nor the government can seem to solve, and the lack of classes for weeks on end is terribly detrimental to Honduran children and society.

Now TH is involved in an exciting–and at the same time daunting–effort to resolve these longstanding problems. For almost the entire month of March 2011, public school teachers in Honduras were on strike once again. In some areas, the strikes degenerated into violent confrontations between protesters and riot police. Most detrimental, though, was the fact that thousands of Honduras’ most impoverished children missed an entire month of classes.

Given the Government and the Teachers Unions’ inability to agree on a long-term solution to the crisis, on March 25 TH published an open letter in three of Honduras’ major newspapers asking to be incorporated as an official, neutral, objective third party in negotiating a solution to the crisis. The response was almost immediate! The following Monday, the President of Honduras, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, read the letter out loud in a cabinet meeting. On Wednesday night he might for several hours with TH members, who shared their concerns and ideas, and on Thursday TH members testified before Honduras’ National Congress both about their research into the long-term problems in the education system, and about possible solutions.

TH is currently involved in intense negotiations between teacher unions and the government, looking not only at how to solve the immediate disagreements that caused the strikes in March but at how new legislation and/or amendments to existing legislation may be used to address the deep-rooted causes of the strikes and other problems that have adversely affected Honduras’ poorest students for decades. Please pray for wisdom and courage for TH!

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ASJ Supporting Students’ Learning in Honduras

By Elizabeth Hickel • April 29, 2025

Earlier this month, The Banner published a story written by Our Shared Ministr y by Karina Guevara and Elmer Salinas . The authors showcase the work that ASJ-Honduras is doing to help and support students in Honduras. Karina and Elmer tell the story of Genesis Garcia, an 8-year-old, whose family struggles to find consistent jobs. "Genesis Garcia Baquedano is 8 years old and lives with her older brother, Anderson, and their parents in Honduras. Her parents work hard to support their family. Genesis’s father is a painter who struggles to find consistent work, and her mother is a street vendor who spends long hours away from home." According to Karina and Elmer, although Genesis is a good student, she was struggling with reading, writing, and math. This is where the ASJ-Hondurans' program, Strong Communities , comes to be a blessing. "Through God’s grace, Genesis and her family were able to join the Strong Communities program facilitated by World Renew’s local partner, Association for a More Just Society (ASJ, because the Spanish translation is Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa). Through the program, Genesis attended academic support sessions, where she impressed her tutors with her perseverance and enthusiasm. Now, Genesis’s teachers praise the program for the significant progress Genesis has been making at school." We are blessed to be able to help kids like Genesis and her family to be able to achieve their dreams and goals. You can read the full story HERE and learn more about the ASJ-Honduras Strong communities program HERE