Since the beginning of 2008, NPH Honduras has welcomed 42 new pequeños into the Ranch family. Nine families with children ranging from two to 15 years old have settled into our homes and entered the process of adjusting to life at the Ranch.

To ease this transition, our staff provides a week orientation where the children stay together at the clinic, receiving medical screenings, and getting to know the layout and the staff of the Ranch. A highlight of this time for the children is that they get to pick out new clothes and shoes to take with them when they pass into the homes.

During the first couple months of their time here, the newly entered children have regular visits with our psychologists and social workers to carefully monitor their integration progress and ensure all their needs are being met. They are also placed in a special class at our school where they receive individualized lessons and instruction and are evaluated to determine which grades they should enter and what their special learning needs are. All of our new children are presented at weekly mass and warmly welcomed with a hearty round of applause from their new brothers and sisters.

One of these new families are the Almendares, whom arrived after their mother passed away from a terminal illness, and their father disappeared. The children initially went to live with their aunt. Sadly, as a single mother with a very limited income, she was unable to support the children or provide for their education, so they were brought to the Ranch. The children have a strong resemblance, sharing the same vivacious smiles and huge, dark, shining eyes. Franklin, the oldest at 11 years old, now lives in our

youngest boys’ home, San Francisco. His siblings, Treisi, 9, Walter, 7, and Gerson, 5, live together in Casa Suyapa, our babies’ home. Their caregivers report that all three of them have adjusted well, seem very content, and that Treisi has a bubbly personality and

enjoys telling stories.

Franklin has also adapted well to Ranch life. His teacher praises his good classroom discipline and respectfulness. “He always demonstrates a positive attitude,” he shares, “and he has shown a lot of progress academically—especially in math.” Franklin just passed into the 2nd grade at our Ranch school. Like his sister, he loves to talk. He has a very animated personality and liberally gives great hugs and besitos, (little kisses).

The Pastrana family also joined us in early March. Their story mirrors that of the Almendares’ family. Arriving only days after their mother’s death, the five siblings were counseled caringly by our psychologists and social workers to assist them in accepting this tragedy. After a month, the children faced yet more heartache, receiving news of their older brother’s death in a car accident. Facing this new loss, now however with the support of their new NPH family, the Pastranas showed great strength of spirit, proving an example to us all.

Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos™ Honduras

at th

e R

anch

sum

mer A Growing Family

An introduction to some of our new brothers and sisters.

™

Despite the difficulty of their first few months, the children have adapted quickly to their new lives here, Heidy, 15, Dania, 12, and Chelin, 10, living in our girls’ homes, Breylin, 14, in our boys’ home, and Maicol, 5, in our babies’ home. This family often expresses their gratitude for the opportunity to live at the Ranch and join its family, thanking our social worker, Silvia, in particular, for her role in this blessing. Ada, a pequeña doing her final year of service in our social work department, predicts a bright future for these children, “This is really a family that you can tell will take advantage of all NPH has to offer them and gain a lot from their experiences here.”

When asked what the most difficult part of being here was, Dania responded with a serious, steady glance and a gentle, but strong, smile, “Nothing. Really, nothing. We love it here. We are so happy to be here.”

Thank you for your help as we partner together providing new beginnings for these children. If you’re interested in sponsoring a new child, please contact our Sponsorship office at sp.hn@nph.org.

Contributed by Patricia Graham, Home Correspondent

Ex-Pequeño Follow-up ProgramOffering support to our young adults once they leave the home.

Mauricio Calles is the coordinator of our Ex-Pequeño Follow-up Program. He is responsible for all the youths that have left our home. Some young adults decide to leave NPH once they become of legal age, seeking independence and usually going to live with extended family members.

This unique program consists of six different services. Youths leaving the home in good standing receive two support payments of $106 to cover their initial needs. Ex-pequeños are offered emergency medical care and in some cases, family members as well. If an ex-pequeño meets certain criteria, then NPH Honduras will pay their school or tuition fees for continuing education. At the moment nine youths are receiving scholarships. NPH has partnered with

a company that offers a six month vocational training to five adolescents in typesetting and graphic design. Their living expenses

are covered during their training. All ex-pequeños can seek support in legal and career consulting, or psychological issues. Interest-free loans are offered, the maximum $265, in order to build up their own small business and in most of the cases the rates are paid back very punctual.

About 300 ex-pequeños are assisted in some form by the program. Mauricio, an ex-pequeño himself, keeps in contact by calling and providing home visits. Once a year, everyone is invited to the NPH home for activities and interaction with the Ranch family. An important interaction is when the ex-pequeños share their personal life experiences with the children. In 2007, about 130 ex-pequeños and their families participated.

“This program is so important because it bridges the gap between pequeños who decide to leave NPH and the outside world,” explained Mauricio, “and I understand that first-hand.”

Contributed by Dortje Treiber, European Grant Coordinator

2nd Annual NPHIFamily Services Conference Although our organization has over 50 years of experience, NPH is constantly focused on improving the care given to our children by further professionalizing our hundreds of caregivers. The Family Service Department supports the NPH Directors, coordinators and staff in their roles and responsibilities in creating a family environment that promotes the well-being of the children based on Fr. William Wasson’s philosophy.

The Family Service team strives to achieve this goal through specialized staff training programs that focus on the children’s physical, mental, social and moral development. A key element of our strategy is implementing on-site Family Service Leadership teams in each home that provide on-going support and education to both the staff and children.

We are planning our 2nd annual workshop, August 21-27, 2008 in Honduras. We expect to welcome the House Directors and key child care staff, psychologists and social workers from all our nine homes to develop together best practice models for our childcare.

Our main goal of this workshop will be to develop and implement leadership programs for our youth, through ongoing character formation programs and joint workshops.

Markus StreitFamily Service Assistant

If you are interested in funding the workshops or leadership training please email mgery@nph.org

A Growing Family continued...

Bright Sight for the FutureHard at work with a new vision initiative at NPH Honduras.

Three hundred children examined, a hundred and some to go. German volunteer optometrist, Christiane Hensel, took a break from the quality time she’s been spending with her vision charts to share a bit about her work.

Christiane’s first task was to perform basic vision examinations on all of our children, year of service youths, and university students. She set up temporary examination rooms at our school and at the vocational workshops. She has found that about 20% or 100 of our children, are in need of a prescription—a percentage she says is pretty typical, even as compared with Germany and the US. Percentages among the older children are higher as they have gone longer without glasses and, like all students, are straining their eyes.

Equipped with this information, Christiane’s next step will be to set up shop in our external clinic and measure the needed prescriptions using specialized machines donated by some of her contacts in Germany. After determining the prescriptions, Christiane will be able to request donations of the correct lenses, as well as frames, so that she can construct the glasses for our children. One of her main goals is to organize and set up the workshop and examination room so that they can be used by other short and long-term volunteers in the future, in serving the needs of both our children and people in the surrounding village areas who are regularly treated at our external clinic.

Another move toward making this vision initiative sustainable is the training Christiane has started with the nurses here at NPH Honduras. She has begun a series of training sessions to equip nurses with the knowledge and resources to perform routine screenings, especially on children who are entering the Ranch for the first time.

This effort is not without its challenges. Lenses are expensive, and not as readily available here in Honduras as in more developed countries. To help locate the best producers and procedures, Christiane hopes to partner with other international organizations who assist individuals and groups that are trying to set up sight clinics. Aside from these logistical concerns, many of our children, especially the girls, do not want glasses. Wearing

glasses is not as culturally accepted here in Honduras as it is in Europe and the States where it is even seen as fashionable and trendy. Sensitive to this concern, Christiane hopes to get a donation of “cool-looking” frames to distribute to the kids.

In the future, our optometry workshop here in Honduras may serve as a base for volunteer optometrists performing examinations in other NPH homes and then returning to our workshop, with its specialized equipment, to determine necessary prescriptions and put together the glasses for the children.

If you would like to help us purchase these needed glasses for our children, please visit our website, www.nph.org, Optometry Project.

Contributed by Patricia Graham, Home Correspondent

Optometry Needs:

Specially prescribed lenses 80@$10 = $800

Modern, durable frames for boys and girls 80@$9.50 = $760 Shipping costs for frames from U.S. to Honduras $200

Test charts for children ages 1-3 years 2@$17 = $34 Skiascope and rechargable battery adapter pack $340

Tool kit (pliers, screwdriver, files, etc.) $225 Total needed: $799

Funded

Funded

Teaching the Gift of Sharing to Our ChildrenThe Sharing Fund serves all the children.

One of my favorite activities with the children is accompanying them on their birthday excursions to the city for a filling lunch of deliciously greasy pupusas, a leisurely stroll through the city to buy presents, and a celebration with soda and cake before piling back into the bus and heading home to the Ranch. Or at least this is the ideal. In reality, the afternoon involves a lot of hand-holding, person counting and heart-stopping in the name of protecting the children from the crowded, traffic-congested streets of downtown Tegucigalpa. All of our children come from backgrounds of extreme poverty where the concept of property, much less personal property, is foreign to them. Even after coming to live at the Ranch, the entirety of their worldly possessions easily fit into a locker and they must accustom themselves to sharing, among an even larger family, everything from plates, shampoo, food, socks and school supplies to chores, and the attention and affections of staff and volunteers.

“That’s why the Sharing Fund is such a gift for our children,” remarks Yeni García, the coordinator of our NPH Honduras Sponsorship office who manages our Sharing Fund account. These funds are used to give our children something of their own, to make them feel special and recognize them as individuals. Monies from the Sharing Fund are sent by donors for costs outside of NPH’s normal operating budget. The funds are financial gifts used for a variety of activities and celebrations

commemorating special milestones in the lives of our children.

The Sharing Fund cont-ributes to the costs of planned events such as our monthly

birthday celebrations, new outfits for the children at Christmas time, graduation presents, Quinceañero/a parties and our summer Olympics event. Aside from these events, the Sharing Fund also provides funds for special weekend activities for children. The Sharing Fund is also used to support different clubs and sports groups at the Ranch like our soccer teams, which compete in a local league, requiring special uniforms and equipment.

Another gift for our children, made possible through the Sharing Fund, is small excursions, offering our children the opportunity to get away from the daily routine and common sights of the Ranch and giving them exposure to new places and educational experiences. Our school librarian, Yolany Recinos, is currently planning to take our Reader’s Club on a trip to the Copan Ruins, a cultural and historical attraction in northern Honduras. The Sharing Fund will contribute to these trip expenses.

These gifts, celebrations, and trips mean a lot to our children and it’s common to hear our kids talking about these events months in advance. More important than the gifts and events themselves, of course, is the sense of significance they contribute to each child who participates, demonstrating in tangible ways that they are valued. The children are learning that these events are gifts, not something that they’ve earned or something they necessarily need, but something that is given out of love through funds sent by people who want to bless them.

The last time a few of my boys went on a birthday excursion they came back with huge bags of candy—not to eat themselves, but to share with the rest of us, with their family. This is perhaps the best gift the Sharing Fund gives: giving our children something of their own while simultaneously instilling in them the beauty of sharing, of giving, not out of a sense of obligation, but of their own free will. It is truly a blessing to share.

Photos: Top, children under 10 celebrate their birthdays on the Ranch. Left, older youths eating pupusas in the city.

Contributed by Patricia Graham, Home Correspondent

Friends of the Orphans Northwest recently led its fifth annual trip to NPH Honduras. Our band of 27 hardy travelers wasn’t about to let airport closures and baggage restrictions stop us from ten days of non-stop fun with the pequeños/as at Rancho Santa Fe!

Over the past few years, it has become custom to spend our mornings working on the Ranch while the kids are in school. We try to lend a hand to the employees in the kitchen, gardens, tortilla house and farm. This gives us a greater appreciation and understanding for what it takes to care for and feed the children on a daily basis.

We also bring projects and donations with us to help make improvements to benefit the children. One of our projects included painting, decorating, and hanging curtains in the girls’ new exercise room. We hope this will make them feel more excited about exercising with a more attractive and private place to get in shape! We also painted one of the girls’ bedrooms and built a volleyball court outside the girls’ homes. A medical doctor traveling with us helped one of the nurses give CPR classes to the staff.

Our afternoons and evenings were spent with the kids, and it was everyone’s favorite part of the day! Play time, homework, meals, impromptu dance parties, and meaningful conversations bring visitors and pequeños together to create lifelong memories. For about half our group, who had visited the Ranch at least once before, they continued to build upon relationships formed in past

years. These afternoons give visitors the chance to get to know their godchildren, along with their friends, siblings, and the caregivers and volunteers that care for them. Many visitors also choose a godchild to sponsor while in Honduras as lasting relationships are formed.

We also had the joy of visiting Casa de los Angeles in Tegucigalpa, the home for special needs children. We were all impressed by the resources and therapies offered to the pequeños in that special home. One visitor who knows some sign language formed a strong bond with Ondina, a deaf woman who is learning sign. They were able to communicate and learn a lot about each other in their short visit. While in Tegucigalpa, we also had the chance to meet the boys studying in university and treat them to a pizza dinner. It was wonderful to visit with them and let them practice their English.

By the end of our ten days it was hard to say goodbye. Lives continue to be touched by the children of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos as sponsors and supporters take the opportunity to visit the homes and meet their godchildren. We parted with strong smiles, a few tears, and promises to write, send pictures, and (we hope) return on next year’s trip. NPH is a lasting lesson in love and understanding and we are so appreciative to NPH Honduras opening its doors to us and letting the children become imprinted on our hearts!

Contributed by Laura UsecheFriends Northwest Office Administrator and Volunteer Coordinator

“It’s funny how someplace so

different from my everyday

life can feel so much like

home. From the very first

moment I arrived at the

Ranch, even though I knew

no one, I felt that I belonged

there.”

Alina FleuryFriends Mid-Atlantic/Northeast Sponsorship Manager

Marcos and Alina

Marcos lives at Casa de Los Angeles, our home in the capital for children with severe disabilities which include a variety of brain, muscular disorders and developmental delays.

All of the children need 24-hour attention and we’re fortunate to have twelve NPH high school students living in the home and helping with their care. Nearly all of the Casa Angeles children are unable to move or eat on their own. Volunteer therapists from our Ranch home visit once a week to help with physical, speech,water, and horseback riding therapy. Right next door, Arc of Hope provides therapy for our children who struggle with uncontrollable muscle movement and brain paralysis, while our children with Downs Syndrome attend a specialized school.

Friends Combine Sharing and Special Projects to Benefit Our Children.

Friends with the Chicas in front of the newly constructed volleyball court.

Pasos Pequeñitos (Little Steps) Day Care Center currently cares for 18 of these little smiles in Honduras’ capital city of Tegucigalpa. The center was created in 2005 by an NPH ex-volunteer impressed by the need for reliable, affordable childcare for the children of ex-pequeñas, young women who had left the Ranch to start their independent lives in the city. Jobs with both flexible schedules and adequate pay to support a family are almost nonexistent, especially for young women just entering the workforce. The young, single mothers found themselves in the discouraging situation of needing someone to care for their children so they could work, but not having the disposable income necessary to pay for this care.

The result was the development of Pasos Pequeñitos. Originally funded and managed independently, in October 2007, the center was welcomed officially into the care of NPH.

As its name suggests, the day care center was founded with two main objectives: to provide a care and education center for at-risk children, but also, and principally, to partner and support young, single mothers as they take steps forward investing in their future through higher education studies, job training, and work. These young women, like their children, are also testing their strength, recovering from stumbles, learning from mistakes, and gradually achieving the balance and confidence to stride forward into futures full of potential.

Pasos Pequeñitos provides care every weekday starting at 6:30 am and closing at 6:30 pm, a schedule designed to accommodate the mothers’ typical work schedules. The children, who range in age from 1 to 8 years old, are provided with two nutritious meals and a healthy snack each day. Activities for the children range from educational and moral instruction to creative and oh-so-essential recreational ventures. Each week the children go on a special field trip.

For the 13 single mothers the center partners with, there are workshops, discussion groups and speakers addressing topics related to both job skills and child development and parenting. Aside from these educational resources, the center works to secure donations of material items such as clothing, food, toiletries and cosmetics, and negotiates partnerships with local medical professionals to provide free or discounted medical and dental care for the children and their mothers.

Pasos Pequeñitos has been coordinated by Honduran Rosalina Osorto Barahona and French volunteer Lauriane Bonacina, however Lauriane’s service term is up and she is returning home. NPH is currently looking for a volunteer to fill this position. Other staff include a cook, a Honduran volunteer and one year of service student who assist in childcare, food preparation, and activity planning. Current needs for the center include funding to purchase new recreational equipment for the children, clothing donations, and scholarships for young mothers to continue their studies.

Pasos PequeñitosLittle Steps Day Care Center Brings Big Hopes to Single Mothers and Their Children.

Assistant Coordinator Volunteer Needed

The Assistant Coordinator volunteer would be responsible for providing support for the day care coordinator and developing and planning educational activities. The volunteer will also share administrative and accounting responsibilities, serve as supervisor for year of service youths, oversee existing donors and recruit new donors, and share in daily chores which rotate among the team.

A successful candidate will have experience in childhood education and in working with children under 6 years of age, ability to work independently, strong organizational and administrative skills, knowledge of basic computer programs.

A strong command of Spanish is necessary and an independent personality is recommended as the volunteer will be the only foreign volunteer at the site. A private room is available for living accommodations.

Contributed by Patricia Graham, Home Correspondent

Step inside the spacious, clean rooms, softly lit with the warm afternoon sun, illuminating walls cheerfully decorated with murals and covered with the brightly-colored works of young artists. Large, dark, inquisitive eyes peek at you with ever-increasing boldness. Small hands, of varying levels of stickiness, reach up to wrap you in hugs. Bright smiles, full of life, though lacking the occasional tooth, flash at you, effortlessly evoking reflections on your own face.