Senior, Hayley Harrington, spent the first week of November with Forgotten Children Ministries in Tegucigalpa, Comayaguela, and Monte Redondo, Honduras. This ministry helps gets impoverished children off of the violent drug-filled streets and into a safe home with a family, school, church, and countless people who love them. Many of these 74 boys and girls have been abused by their own families, have had to dig through trash bins for food, and some have never been given a hug until coming to this ministry. Besides just these street children, the ministry houses about 15 teams a year from the United States to come and volunteer their service for a week. These duties include construction, medical brigades, handing out beans and rice to poor families on the side of the road, ministering to the young boys and girls in the ministry, and showing love to these children. This was Hayley’s second trip in three months, her first being just two weeks before the start of her senior year at Queen’s Grant.
Hayley asked the Spanish Honor’s Society to help with a drive for her to be able to bring toys and candy for the children of the streets, as well as school supplies to the ministry itself on this. The “Todos Contamos” drive was a huge success! Our school raised so many pencils that, due to weight limit, she wasn’t able to take all of them on this trip. She still managed to carry two 50-pounds bags of donations raised by Queen’s Grant students!
Hayley cannot wait to go back to Honduras! She says that she has a passion for these people and could not imagine not going back to see them. “After seeing such poverty in the world, it’s hard not to look at life in an entirely different way. We take so many things for granted. We even take the fact we have a school to attend for granted. I used to agonize about having to go to school, but then I realized that some people agonize about the fact they can’t.” Hayley hopes to go back to Tegucigalpa in March 2012, if funding, schoolwork, and her mother allow.
