A unique partnership between Shoulder to Shoulder and Honduran public education offers accessible, quality, bilingual education. In addition, we provide computer tablets and servers, with offline materials, to 50 schools -- sparking learners' desire to study. Inadequate resources mean most children only attend school through the sixth grade and still leave illiterate, sustaining endemic poverty and dependency. This project is the empowerment of the greatest resource: the human mind and heart.
In Honduras, public school buildings are collapsing, books and materials are non-existent, there are too few teachers, and those few are ill-prepared. In poverty-stricken, rural areas like ours, the situation is worse. Children leave school early. Without skills and uneducated, they attempt to find work, but fail. Many young persons, in frustration, illegally migrate to the US. Private schools are accessible to a very tiny minority. The system sustains widespread poverty.
Shoulder to Shoulder partners with public education to provide accessible, quality curriculum and resources. While assisting all schools, the Good Shepherd Bilingual School in Camasca is the model for a primary education of excellence. We provide proven pedagogical resources, computer-based technology, and English-speaking volunteers to assist Honduran teachers. We partner with 50 other public Honduran schools to provide them with educational technology. Our students are engaged and inspired.
Taking what we learned about computer-assisted learning, we have expanded into 12 High Schools and 35 middle schools. Working with the Honduran Ministry of Education, we have loaded the Honduran curriculum onto servers, so that teachers without textbooks can still teach what the children need. In our Partnership Model, the Parents Associations purchase large screen TVs, and StS provides the server, router, and computer tablets. Education will provide the standard for hope and inspiration.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
