To Yocón and beyond

By Matt

Well, you might be wondering "what happened to Matt?". It's true I haven't posted a blog in WAY too long. The truth is that I have been quite occupied with the Ag and Environment program to the point of not having much time for blogging, my apologies.

Anyway, as you may know for about the past 6 months we have had Jordan Fox living next door to us. He is a Canadian, and part of the "Carpinteros" group that comes often to Honduras to help out. It was really great to have him here. A while back Jordan's dad Steve came to visit. Steve is helping out with the health program in the south with some suppliments. Steve, Jordan, Arturo and I traveled down a very rough dirt road to the town of Yocon, and then beyond to several villages up in the mountains. This northern part of Olancho is quite isolated and many of these villages have recieved very little attention from the governement in terms of development and law enforcement. We stayed with Pastor Adrian and his family in a typical little country home. There is no water or electricity in these remote settings, so to shower we walked about 15 minutes down to a big waterfall. It was very beautiful.


The purpose of the trip was to continue the "Community Transformation Plans" that Arturo has been making with the community members. The goal is to unite and organize the people of the community around their shared priorities for improvement. The people write a short history of the community, draw a map, and identify the local resources that they have to work with including organizations. Community priorities are set and plans are made for how to achieve those goals, who will do it, and when. The priorities often include things like water projects, latrines, and getting electricity in the community. Diaconia often works to help strengthen and guide groups like the water board, or whatever other group of people that might be responsible for getting projects going.



On this trip I mostly translated for Steve so that he could contribute to what was going on. It is exciting to see communites working together like this to improve their well being. By now Jordan is back in Canada with his family, it was great to have him living here for that time.