November 12, 2021
Carlos Hernández, ASJ-Honduras' Executive Director, presents to a group of reporters.
Our Annual Impact Report shares stories of how we're working for peace and justice in Honduras and beyond. Check out a few highlights from the report below or click to the right to access the full report.
Young Adults Leading the Way
In two of the major issues impacting Honduras, we are proud that young adults are leading the way:
A group of 48 young people have joined ASJ’s first School for Young Auditors, which teaches them how to use auditing to counter corruption and improve the quality of public services.
In anticipation of Honduras’ elections in late November, our young adult-led “Informed Vote” team is calling on candidates to publish their assets, tax returns, and conflicts of interest on our public online platform. As they promote transparency, they are also hosting nationwide forums for young people to develop and present proposals on changes they would like to see in the country, from safe public spaces to employment programs.
Preventing Violence
We are passionate about sharing our experiences to help prevent violence. This year, our “Peace & Justice” investigators and psychologists have hosted workshops with more than 300 people from over 45 churches and faith-based organizations on how to recognize and report cases of child sexual abuse. After one workshop, a participant commented,
Thank you so much for training us and giving us these important tools. You show us that we can be agents of change and set a new precedent and path.
ASJ also signed an agreement with other civil society organizations, including UNESCO, Compassion International, and Save the Children’s chapters in Honduras to collaborate on prevention activities and monitoring the justice system’s treatment of cases involving children.
Advocating for Access to Education
ASJ’s pursuit of justice as the pandemic continues to impact Honduras looks like monitoring vaccine distribution and recommending transparent hiring processes of doctors. And it also looks like addressing the way the country’s move to online classes denied access to education to 1.3 million of Honduras’s 2.9 million children.
In response, ASJ has presented a proposal for safe, part-time, in-person classes, which includes teacher vaccinations, focus on remedial learning, infrastructure repair, and prioritization of the most excluded communities. With our and others’ widespread advocacy, the Ministry of Education adopted a strategy that benefits 18,000 students, with more to come.
