Sadie Lockhart and Esther Weiner have a goal. The co-presidents of Students Helping Honduras (SHH) want to raise $50,000 this semester.
It’s all about the kids.
Members of TU’s Student Helping Honduras work with local Hondurans to break ground on a girls’ transitional home in Villa de Soleada.
About 40 Towson students from SHH spent their winter break building a home in Honduras for girls 18 and older, Lockhart says. The young women need a place to stay because they must leave orphanages or group homes when they reach age 18. Now the Towson chapter needs $50,000 to ensure the home is completed.
“We have to do this for them. There’s no ‘oops we didn’t raise the money,’” Lockhart says. “We have to do this because we know who it’s affecting and we know how important it is to their lives,” she adds.
Lockhart worked alongside the young Honduran women who will eventually live in the house. “They were helping out with no shoes on, shoveling,” she recalls.
This was Lockhart’s fourth trip to Honduras. She’s helped with construction of a bilingual school in Villa Soleada, as well as boys’ and girls’ homes. Members of Towson’s SHH chapter begin the projects. Then after they return to the states, students fundraise and send the money to complete each building. SHH employs local Hondurans to oversee and finish the projects.
This year, TU’s SHH chapter plans a range of fundraisers to reach the $50,000 mark, including hosting a thrift shop, selling cupcakes, setting up information tables in the Union and asking for donations at Towsontown Boulevard and York Road, says Weiner.
What makes members so passionate, the TU junior says, is the community in Honduras.
“It’s a really cool kind of volunteering, where you don’t just go and see it and come back with all of your pictures. You become part of a community,” Weiner says. “Villa Soleada is like my second home. I didn’t go and save the kids and the people there. We worked together.”
Lockhart agrees, noting that she’s been able to witness growth and change since her first visit as a freshman. None of the children spoke English, but with the completion of the bilingual school, “these little kids, the same ones I’ve seen all four years, are running up insisting that I speak in English with them just to practice,” she says.
She’s also seen a change in her fellow students.
“It’s amazing to watch from the moment they come to the first meeting to the moment we come back from the plane ride and step back to American soil,” Lockhart says. “To see them so impassioned is really incredible. We’re all just one huge SHH family.”
To contribute to the construction of the transitional home, visit the SHH fundraising site.
