Greetings from Ninth Conference on Honduras

We're late checking in, but finally we're on the blog.

Sam and Roxanne arrived in Quimistan Monday afternoon and immediately proceeded through a whirlwind list of TO-DO items---some personal, some representing the Foundation. For example they visited Sra. Umanzor to thank her for the support she gave us this summer by providing us the use of her kindergarten for the eye clinic. They also visited with the Quimistan directors of the Quimistan Valley Scholar program, discussing the protocol we will use to provide the matching funds as they receive local funds from the community.

One unpleasant surprise was to find that the teachers across the country are on strike because they have not been paid in the last six months.

Karen and Allen arrived on Wednesday, and the four of us with Arturo and Suyapa all drove to Copan to participate in the Ninth Conference on Honduras. The overall theme of this three-day conference is "Building Gobal Partnerships" . . . the idea being that if groups and individuals working to help Honduras learn to work together closely, coordinate, and share information and ideas, then many of the solutions to core development problems and issues will more easily, efficiently be realized.

For more information about the conference, go to projecthonduras.com.

The kickoff speaker for the conference was Ambassador Hugo Llorens of the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He expressed great appreciation to the tens of thousands of individuals and thousands of groups involved in volunteer, humanitarian, and development efforts to support the people.

The first day of the conference was exactly what we have been looking for. We located many other individuals and organizations active in medical, educational, agricultural, and children's homes. The format of the conference encouraged a lot of interaction allowing identification of who has what experience over the broad range of developments.

After the sessions we were able to spend about an hour in discussions with Adolfo Leon, who has responsibility for the Community Health Evangelism program across all of Honduras. His insight regarding the effectiveness of different approaches to development will be helpful to the Foundation as we consider possible new directions in the coming year.

For those of you who have sweated through our summer trips to Honduras, you'll be surprised to know that the conference center today was air conditioned. Roxanne was actually cold enough to return to the room to gather up sweaters so we wouldn't all be freeze-dried by the end of the day.

More tomorrow.

Allen