Foreign Assistance Helps Give Hondurans Hope

By David Weiss, President & CEO, Global Communities
Global Communities has been working in Honduras for more than 30 years. We help Hondurans develop sustainable solutions for unemployed youth who often have little choice but to join a gang. We help Hondurans to combat Zika, Malaria, and HIV health crises. And we help their farmers find relief from drought.

Through our community-led work, we have seen time and time again that Hondurans would prefer to stay at home. They don’t want to make the treacherous journey north just to survive. One family farmer, for example, shared with us that after getting involved in our community-led water harvesting project, he and his family now have hope, and no longer see the need to leave their country. For the first time, many farmers in the dry southern areas have water reservoirs and a drip irrigation system that allows them a third harvest of crops such as maize and melons. This makes a huge difference to the economy of the entire region.

Foreign assistance is helping stop the spread of the Zika virus through community work such as ours on health education and mosquito control.

These community-led projects require significant time, energy, and money. When the United States invests its foreign aid resources, working through organizations such as Global Communities, it benefits not only the Honduran people, it benefits the United States. With greater prosperity at home, fewer Hondurans feel the need to pack up and leave. And that means less strain on our resources here in the United States.