ASI: Sacrificing Food for Education

Will you please begin donating $5-10/month to AHMEN's Community Empowerment Program?

From Bottom Left to Bottom Right: Mary Guffey, Pastor Willington, Pastor Willington CA in-training, Dr. Camp, Frank Monterosa, Pastor Mario

Oftentimes when I talk to people about AHMEN's Community Empowerment Program, the AHMEN-SIFAT Initiative (ASI), they agree that the program sounds nice coming out of my mouth.  They then ask me what their donations support and what the community agents are actually taught.

Well, the first one is easy, ASI is 100% funded by individual donations.  Those donations go to pay for the logistical expenses of Dr. Byron Morales in Honduras.  They do not pay for his salary.  SIFAT does that.  They do not pay for the local quarterly workshops in Cusuna, Jutiapa, or Yorito.  The local municipalities do that.

The second one is a little more complicated and depends on the health needs of each individual community.  In Honduras, and in the workshops in general, the main health needs discussed are malaria, waterborne illness, lung disease, HIV/AIDS, and abuse.  In the words of Dr. Morales, "the goal of the program is to develop local capacity to promote total health concepts in the community."  Once each workshop's community agents master the concepts listed above, they then train their own community members to do the same.  In this way, ASI becomes an intergenerational solution to an ingrained and institutionalized cycle of poverty.

Pastor Willington and ASI need your support!

When asked if the workshops were worth continuing, Pastor Willington responded "Sometimes I go without food so I can have the travel money to attend."  I think that is a "Yes."  Pastor Willington has trekked for hours from the jungles of La Moskitia to attend ASI-Cusuna over the last four years, and he and Frank Monterosa are now strongly considering bringing an ASI quarterly workshop to train their local leadership in the communities surrounding Raista and Las Marias.

If you would like to be a part of our support system, please contact me.  We need your support!  If you would like to learn more about AHMEN's Community Empowerment Program, come to Honduras with me this June on the "Rio de Agua Viva" team.  You can work with ASI-Jutiapa and ASI-Cusuna up close an personal as part of a water filtration education program and study through Samford University.


Together, we are the difference.