IPA Foundation - celebrating 10 years of accomplishment

This year commemorates 10 years of an ongoing project that brought together people in Copán, Honduras and the Rotary Clubs of the Pacific Northwest of United States and Canada, and individual donors.  Our mission has been to enrich the lives of residents and communities in the Northern Highlands of Honduras.  Our focus has been on rural villages in an area where coffee growing is the main economic activity.  Over the last 10 years we have gone from supporting 2 to 38 villages.

The International Project Alliance (IPA) would like to thank you for making IPA so successful in Copán. When we arrived in Honduras 10 years ago the average educational level was 3rd grade in the affiliated villages; now over 70% of kids are attending secondary school. Many IPA villages didn’t even have a secondary school to attend; we have initiated 15 secondary schools that are now integrated in the local school system.  This has resulted in 40 kids attending university on scholarship in 2024-- an impressive achievement that couldn’t have occurred without your support.

Let’s step back for a moment to see how we got here. After Peter Martin, the current President of IPA searched for a region of the world with the greatest need, the northern highlands of Honduras became an obvious target. Honduras is the poorest country in Central America, with many aid programs avoiding the region due to political and geographical issues. Peter and Rotary jumped into the void by assembling 14 Rotary Clubs in the Pacific Northwest (US and Canada) and a collection of dedicated individual donors and groups, now providing resources and impacting the lives of Mayan villagers in 38 villages in the region. Our local partner is the Club Rotario de Copán Ruinas.  IPA’s program manager, Cinthia Manzano, and our construction manager,  Mauricio Alvarado, have allowed us to have a positive impact on the lives of some of Honduras’ poorest residents.

Here are a few of the milestones attained since 2014.

2024 Educational Highlights 

- Education programs from 2 to 38 Mayan villages

- Health plan for all of 2681 students

- 549 scholarships.  Many of you support our Adopt-A-Dream scholarships for middle and high school students. Thank you! The program has been so successful that we are outgrowing our funding. Education has become popular. Village children who have moved on to attend university have become rock stars in their villages.

- Scholarships for 40 university students, with students completing degrees in medicine, dentistry, law, business, agronomy and social welfare.  Three students attend trade/vocational schools. We intend to greatly expand support of vocational education.

- Libraries for all of IPA affiliated village schools (mobile libraries for elementary and fixed libraries for secondary schools).

-Teaching materials and furniture for schoolteachers.  

Infrastructure Highlights in the 38 villages  

- Construction projects - bridge building and water system repairs after hurricane damage ($31,000 raised), many new school rooms, new roofing, village home floors, school play equipment  

- Water projects - safe and sustainable drinking water projects in 5 villages

- Power projects - delivering electrical power to villages through partnerships with local municipalities

- Sanitation projects - latrines and proper sanitation for both schools and villages

- Delivering fuel-efficient stoves to help reduce deforestation 

This is just a sampling of the major impact you have had in these small villages.

In 2017 after much study of systems to pull/push rural villages out poverty, IPA initiated its  

Rapid Development Program. The concept is that all drivers of poverty must be attacked concurrently as part of a 3-year program. It has been launched in eleven villages.  Village Savings and Loans (VSLA) are among the most successful of the Rapid Development projects, where community members save regularly and oversee the lending of money to members.  This allows families to save for emergencies, special occasions, and to support their businesses. Rapid Development has supported the schools in the villages, facilitated the planting of home gardens, trained and supplied Village Health Volunteers, and encouraged the forming of small businesses in the villages.  

Training of adults in life skills like nutrition, hygiene, gardening, agriculture, and entrepreneurship were part of Rapid Development.  Photos of some of those events include adults practicing gardening or learning how to plant and care for various crops, and workshops on: how to launch a small family business, basic arithmetic, financial management, goal setting,  and managing a VSLA.  Further, based on observations of family dynamics that were limiting the health and well-being of village residents, workshops on family violence reduction and communication were incorporated into our program. 

Some of the new businesses that were established under Rapid Development are:

Agricultural Businesses – selling to local markets except coffee which is an international market.

 Farming vegetables

 Raising hogs 

 Chicken/egg farming

 Coffee growing and processing

 Cheesemaking-processing and marketing

 Bakery 

Non-Agricultural Businesses

 Car and motorcycle repair

 Fabric and garment sewing and repair

 Construction

 Village stores

Most of these businesses were started with a loan from the Village Saving and Loan Association in the community.  There have been no defaults on VSLA loans.  Some villages have performed exceptionally. Our Rapid Development goal for 2024-25 is to provide additional assistance so VSLAs may be self sufficient.

Enjoy your accomplishments, we really appreciate all of your assistance, and if you haven’t joined us on one of our trips, we hope you will do so in the future.