wfn.org | Presiding Bishop's fund helping Honduras

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

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Kathryn McCormick
Episcopal News Service
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99-067
Presiding Bishop's Fund to build homes in Honduras
by Nan Cobbey
(Episcopal Life) The Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief is about
to start building. 

Ninety-five Honduran families left homeless by Hurricane Mitch last fall
will soon own two-bedroom, cinderblock houses they've helped build in a
community all their own. The "Faith, Hope and Joy Project" outside San
Pedro Sula is the beginning of a new endeavor in which Episcopalians
will undertake the construction of 500 homes. 

Phoebe Griswold, wife of Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, traveled to
Honduras in April to look at the land and review the plans. She came
home enthusiastic.

The land, said Griswold, who had originally traveled to Honduras not
long after the hurricane struck, is "lovely... flat and ready for
development... surrounded by beautiful hills." Her delight in the
project focuses also on a twist added by the local diocese: Each house
will be deeded to the woman of the family "for the benefit of her
children."

"That is a very unique shape put into this by the Diocese of Honduras,"
says Griswold. "The thinking was that women have little access to
rights. This would give them some security."
Reconstruction is slow
Security is in short supply in Honduras today. Five months after
Hurricane Mitch devastated the country with two weeks of unceasing rain,
cleanup and reconstruction are making slow headway, according to the man
hired to direct the Fund's new building project. 

"For the most part," writes the Rev. P. Leonel Blanco Monterroso, "the
victims of the hurricane have not been able to reestablish themselves."
In documenting the Faith, Hope and Joy Project, Blanco provides this
catalog of the destruction in Honduras: 
More than 9,000 dead
More than 8,000 disappeared
146 bridges destroyed
40 percent of basic infrastructure destroyed
80 percent of agricultural sector destroyed
35 percent of homes destroyed.

Blanco has seen disasters before. Twenty-four years ago, after a
devastating earthquake in Guatemala, he gained his expertise building
1,800 homes. He's realistic about the situation in Honduras.

"Both the economy and the agricultural sector were devastated as
torrential rains eroded the rich soil. Already struggling, many families
were thrust deeper into poverty," he wrote. "A monthly package of
provisions for each family is still handed out. Employment is scarce.
Direct action must be taken."
Direct action
Project Faith, Hope and Joy is the church's direct action. It's been
made possible by an overwhelming response to the pleas for help that
came from Honduras and the rest of Central America last fall. 

"The PB's Fund has raised over $2 million, more than for any event in
its history," says Griswold with a bit of awe. She wants to be involved
in using that money wisely and for the long term, and she wants to
encourage others to join her.

"The impetus here is to show Episcopalians what Episcopalians can do.
This is the way they can actually make a difference, a way to say, 'We
are more than issues. Together we can actually do what our baptismal
covenant calls us to do.'"

Griswold and Abagail Nelson, who has just been hired to coordinate the
project for the fund, are hoping to encourage individuals and parishes
to volunteer to help with the construction. 

"It's a great way for people to feel like they are hands-on responding,"
says Nelson. "We do need able-bodied people. We expect this to last for
the next three years. We would like this summer to be a push." She hopes
the first volunteers will start in June. 
$25 a month
"This project will focus on the family who does not have the resources
or capacity to improve their circumstances through their own means,"
according to Blanco.

The pilot project, at an estimated cost of $600,000, is to provide the
95 homes with 500 square feet of living space on lots of about 600
square feet. They will cost $3,000, and the families will be able to pay
for them at the rate of $25 per month for 10 years, without interest.
The repaid money will be used to build additional houses and provide
capital for improvements to the community and economic development
activities. The families will help to build their own houses. In
addition, the plan calls for building a community center, a medical
clinic and a church. 

The Faith, Hope and Joy Project differs from other building projects in
one more significant way: The church will be providing pastoral
counseling throughout the building project. Organizers recognized that
the families are rebuilding more than houses. Lives and community ties
were shattered by the last November's storm. The clergy will be joined
by social workers in offering support to the families. 

Other Episcopal groups, including the Diocese of Washington and the
South American Missionary Society, are also building communities in
Honduras. The projects, done in partnership with the Diocese of
Honduras, are expected to produce a total of 500 houses.

In addition to Griswold, Nelson and Blanco, the planning group for the
Presiding Bishop's Fund project includes Ann Vest, former interim
director of the fund; Leo Frade, bishop of Honduras, and Ricardo Potter,
associate director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Anglican and
Global Relations.
"A new time"
To Phoebe Griswold, the situation in Honduras demanded a new way of
responding for the long term. The $2 million donated was "too much money
to give out in dribs and drabs." It was enough that it could allow the
Presiding Bishop's Fund "to look at the rehabilitation and development
piece of its mandate," she said. 

"This is a pilot program to look for the principles that make for good
development," she said. "I think it is a new time."

Nelson shares that view. "From my perspective," says the young woman who
has worked as economic consultant to government agencies in South
America, "good development is something that is sustainable... [that] is
really lifting people above their current standard of living."

The church has a unique role to play in that, she feels. "It's the
American dream that you can work hard, get a good education and your
children will be better off than you were. This is something that has
not been the case in most of the world... Economic development provides
[those] who want to work hard the framework in which they can do that.

"There are ways in which we can address, so simply, tiny issues of
standard of living which will mean the world in someone's life," said
Nelson. "That's what we see the fund moving toward."

"How proud I am of our church," says Griswold. "We really are there
doing true and solid things."

Editor's note: To learn more about Project Faith, Hope and Joy  or to
volunteer to help build the new houses, call Abagail Nelson at
800-334-7626, ext. 6139, or e-mail her at anelson@dfms.org.
Contributions to support the project may be sent to the Presiding
Bishop's Fund for World Relief, P.O. Box 12043, Newark, NJ 07101. Checks
should be designated for Honduras Houses.
--Nan Cobbey is features editor of Episcopal Life, the national
newspaper of the Episcopal Church.

Sidebar:
Diocese to diocese: a Honduran community finds a new home
by Kathryn McCormick
(ENS) Raising money and materials for Honduras has been a special effort
in recent months in the Diocese of Washington. Now it is ready to raise
houses-nearly 80 of them-for a community left homeless by the fury of
Hurricane Mitch.

The community, from Puerto Cortes, where their new homes will be built,
is so eager for the houses that families have raised temporary lean-to
shelters on the undeveloped property, said Collie Agle, co-chair of
Washington's Honduras Companion Diocese Committee. Even the ramshackle
lean-tos are better than the cavernous high school gym they shared for
months after the autumn storm, he said.

They are not all Episcopalians, he added, but they have named their
temporary community Colonia Episcopal.

"These people were absolutely wiped out by the hurricane," Agle said.
"They had been squatting on some land, so they didn't own anything, but
they're a real community with a real, working council governing it."
More than 380 people were living in the gym, about 300 of them children,
he said.

The Diocese of Washington has paid $70,000 for the land, said Rachel
Hill, who is on the staff of the diocesan Peace Commission but who has
worked with many diocesan Honduran projects. Honduras and Washington
have been companion dioceses for 10 years, she said, and during that
time a partner parish program also has flourished.

Since last fall, the diocese has raised about $700,000 in funds and
supplies for victims of Hurricane Mitch. A total of $56,000 of that was
raised in a "Spirit of Christmas" campaign in which donors made gifts in
memory of persons close to them. With Easter came a drive based on a
resurrection theme, emphasizing the need in Honduras for seeds and
agricultural implements. The diocese has donated trucks to help
distribute food and other aid, and it has sent medical missions.

In a "Family to Familia" program late last year, more than 1,000 boxes
packed with medicines and household items were sent to Honduras by
families who added notes and photographs of themselves to personalize
the gifts.

A youth group is planning a work trip to Honduras next year. Half of the
trip will be used to continue hurricane cleanup; the other half will
find the students leading a vacation Bible school and helping with
maintenance chores in local parishes.

Agle said the housing project, where some building has already started,
will grow in the future. The project will include construction of a
church, a community center and a school combined with a health facility.
Deeds to the houses will be in the name of the woman of each household,
with her children named as heirs to the property. The diocese plans to
buy a tract of land equal to one it's building on now.

The diocese' involvement with Honduras' recovery has been "vibrant,
really wonderful," Hill said. 

"It's all about resurrection," Agle added.
--Kathryn McCormick is associate director of the Office of News and
Information of the Episcopal Church.