Hope and Faith at Tegucigalpa's Dump

By Denia Hernández
Thousands of tons of garbage are piled up daily in Tegucigalpa’s landfill, constituting different sources of pollution, enabling many disease outbreaks, and endangering the lives of those who call this place work, and even home. Many families make a living out of digging through the mounds of waste hoping to find recyclable materials to sell, scraps to build their houses, and food for the day. Some of the “workers” live inside the dump or in the surrounding communities of El Guanabano and El Buen Samaritano, increasing the risk of property invasions. These people live below the line of poverty which means their income is not enough to afford goods from the basic basket and they lack the essential elements to develop their capacities as human beings. So they resort to the only source of income available to them: trash.

But it doesn’t stop there. Most of them view this as a family business, passed from one generation to the next. So it does not come to as a shock when the whole family is responsible for picking through the garbage, even the children. These kids at the dump don’t have a chance at a healthy diet, living conditions worthy of a human being, or a full education. For most of them, their life-long ambition is to become a garbage truck driver. The image of those little faces working in a toxic, unsafe and hazardous environment is what motivated Pastor Jeony Ordoñez and his family to found AFE (Love, Faith and Hope), an incredible non-profit organization that works with the children from the dump providing them with education, food, some sort of family environment and hope of a future that has been denied to them.

In 2002, AFE started out with 30 children by visiting the dump regularly. Right there, surrounded by mountains of filth, the pastor and his wife taught the children the basic understandings of life and faith through basic literacy and bible classes. Unable to buy proper learning materials, the children dug deep in the garbage to find used pencils, notebooks, and paper. After three years of teaching at the dump, they moved to a rustically built shack under the shade of a few trees next to a football field nearby. Pastor Ordoñez’s goal was to have a school for these children by 2015. But AFE grew faster and bigger then he could’ve ever imagined. With the help of volunteers and support of other organizations, the dream came true much sooner.

Today, AFE has 180 kids enrolled in the school, built next to the football field that served them as site for some time. The land was donated to the organization by the ex mayor of Tegucigalpa. The rustic shack stands under the trees as a reminder of their humble beginnings.

Only children that either work at the dump or their parents do can enroll in the school. It attends children from nursery to 10th grade and they add another grade each year as the older kids move up. Children are now taught the government`s official educational program, which includes an English class. The new computer lab will allow children to learn basic computer and internet skills. AFE’s nursery takes care of babies and toddlers are taught in kindergarten while their parents go to work, to keep them from being brought up in the dump. In the school`s barren soil front yard the children can engage in recreation in their very own playground full with colourful jungle gyms, a merry-go-round, slides and tether ball courts. A very different site then the one they were used to at the dump.

AFE provides a solid education for the children. The school`s staff includes not only teachers, but also a counsellor, a social worker and a special educations teacher. After school activities include P.E., soccer, computer lab and crafts. AFE`s approach to the children from the dump is to help them in their holistic development. They hope to aid them with their physical, intellectual and spiritual needs. AFE provides the children in the school with breakfast and a full lunch, served in their new dining hall. All of the staff and children eat and enjoy some quality lunch time together, nourishing not only their bodies but their minds and souls as well.

Parents do not pay anything for their children to attend school. However, they are expected to get involved in activities organized by AFE, and mothers come to the center twice a month to help cook the children’s lunch.

AFE is not only a source of education for the children from the dump, it also plays an important role in the formation of their lives and future. The foundation provides the kids with the bases for their devotion and soul nourishment through what they call “Ministry of Impact”, which serves as a cushion of faith for their everyday life activities. The ministry guides children through the best path, teaching them to be true Christians and how to handle daily situations with conviction and confidence. Workers at AFE provide spiritual guidance so the children have a well rounded formation and can face society with a new vision, objectives and plans to form their own path and future outside the dump.

AFE is also working for the Convention for Children`s Rights so that the landfill is decreed as an unsafe working environment. But most of the work is yet to be done. The city landfill is still a mountain of waste that represents a hazard to future generations and nearby communities. AFE`s vision is to make the landfill a well organized management of wastes with safety measures, and the sorting of the garbage done at another site. They search to eliminate the middle men in the process, so workers may receive a full wage and the children no longer have to work for a living.

Although there are still hundreds of children out in the dump, AFE has opened new doors and hopes for many of them. Out of the first 30 children that started with AFE out in the dump, 26 have graduated from 6th grade. There are 180 children enrolled now in the school, from which 10 will finish high school next year and are hopeful to attend a university in 2012. Once they dreamed about being a garbage truck driver… now they want to be doctors and engineers. (photo courtesy Internet)