On March 2nd ,14 women from Epiphany will be traveling to El Hogar for the week: Betsy Walsh, Blanca Bastanzuri, Celia Ceruolo, Claudia Bell, Eileen Marks, Janet Boswell, Jill DiOrio, Judy Cotton, Julie Dalton, Kate Reynolds, Liz Kinchen Pam Gaither, Susan Haskell and Susan Malloy.  Below is a very brief history/summary of El Hogar for those who may be unfamiliar with it.

 In 1979, 5 members of the Episcopal Church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, decided to address the deplorable situation of abandoned children on the streets and El Hogar was founded.   

With initial funding from the Methodist Fund for Human Need, the group rented a large old house in a very poor neighborhood of the city.  They went out in the middle of the night and picked up five little boys sleeping under cardboard in a doorway and brought them to the house which was to become El Hogar de Amor y Esperanza, The Home of Love and Hope.  Frightened, cold, hungry, boys were bathed, fed, doctored and loved.  The young Honduran who bathed them, Lazaro Juarez, had also been raised in an orphanage.  Lazaro was El Hogar’s first employee and is now the assistant executive director. 

The boys learned that someone cared for them, and that they had real value “just as they were”. As they grew in self-confidence and self-esteem, others came, until at the end of the first year the old house was bulging at the seams.  The next year El Hogar built a cottage to sleep another 20, then more and more to the present capacity of the elementary school campus of 100 young boys.   El Hogar began with boys because they were abandoned over girls at the rate of 10/1.  In 2007 El Hogar started ministering to the girls of Honduras.

Until establishing their own private school in 1990, the boys (ages 5 to 15 or 16) attended the public school in the community thru the available six grades.  But they still had no job skills.   In 1984 St. Mary’s Technical Institute was built with a grant from the United Thank Offering and from U.S. Aid to Industrial Development.  The original buildings were actually built by the boys, supervised by volunteers.  This was a modern, residential vocational school for 66 teenage boys, where they learned to be accomplished carpenters, furniture builders, metal workers or electricians. 

Since the beginning the vision was to have a third center offering agriculture and farming, so the Agricultural School was dedicated in February of 1993.  El Hogar’s farm is located about one hour from Tegucigalpa, where boys can learn basic agriculture, working in the gardens, milking the cows, as well as crop management techniques.  In 2007 the farm school built a new dorm enabling them to increase their capacity from 40 to 60 boys bringing the total children served at all 3 facilities up to 200. 

 In 1989 Claudia de Castro, Director of the elementary school, came to El Hogar and has been their inspiring leader and compassionate mother to all.  Her husband Raul Castro became the Work team manager in 2007. 

 
In November 2001, largely due to Epiphany’s Rev, Rob O’Neill’s support, El Hogar Ministries, Inc. was formed as a 501c3 organization, allowing all donations to be tax-deductible and Liz Kinchen was hired as the Executive Director of El Hogar Ministries, North America.

 In 2004 Rev Rich Kunz, priest for 24 yrs in Pennsylvania, was hired as the Executive Director of El Hogar in Honduras.  In February 2005, the Technical Institute relocated to a new property in the Amarateca Valley, about 30 minutes outside of Tegucigalpa.  Through the efforts of El Hogar Ministries, a capital campaign raised over $1.5 million to make this move possible. The new Institute was dedicated in February 2008.   In 2006, a 2-chair dental clinic was set up on site for the children with all new equipment for dental teams to work for a week at a time.

 
In 2011 the Rev. Matt Engleby became the new Executive Director in Honduras.  Also in 2011 El Hogar purchased a piece of property in Santa Lucia for the 6 girls -who would be graduating soon- to live.  This past fall’s 2012 elementary school graduation was particularly special as 6 girls, who started at El Hogar in 2007 graduated and are moving on to High School.  The dreams of these girls include being a doctor, teacher, leader, and director of El Hogar.   

El Hogar has realized much growth from the original five boys to over 250 boys and girls in the four centers.  They have a capable Honduran staff of dedicated role models for all the children.  The children learn, by instruction and example, and through the love of God.  They are baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church.  They develop some daily prayer discipline, and attend weekly Eucharist conducted by their chaplain, an Episcopal priest.