Josye Davit, 11, helps rebuild his family's home alongside members of the UMW Campus Christian Community. Homeowner Miguel Banegas told the students, 'I will think of you every time it rains.'

UMW students Blythe McLean and Christie Gill walk with some of the 250 children in Siete de Abril.

Students at the new village school write notes thanking the Virginians who came to help their community.

Shin Fujiyama, founder of Students Helping Honduras at UMW, and coordinator of the relief effort, eats papaya offered by a villager.

Keyly Inestroza, 19, bathes her 2-year-old son Fernando at the home that they share with Oscar Benites. Stafford and Rappahannock Rotarians rebuilt the shack where the family has lived for five years. Like most villagers, they drink, bathe and do dishes from a single water source contaminated by parasites.

Juan Ramon Lopez, 8, lounges in a hammock while his mother, Olympia, washes clothes at the family's dirt-floored home in the village of Siete de Abril. Olympia lives with seven children in the dilapidated dwelling, which is still awaiting repairs. Most families began taking up residence in the area after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Keyla Yeccenia, 16, nurses her month-old child at the one-room home she and boyfriend Hilden Morio have occupied for 5 years. Most families have wood-burning cookstoves that lack ventilation and are unhealthy.

College students, businesspeople from the Fredericksburg area travel to Honduran village where poverty is the norm

Date published: 1/21/2007

By RUSTY DENNEN

EDITOR's NOTE: All reprint proceeds will be donated to Students Helping Honduras.

EL PROGRESO, HONDURAS--Outside this teeming Central American city sits a village on a garbage-strewn dirt road at the foot of a mountain shrouded in mist.

As a bus carrying Americans--mostly from the Fredericksburg area--lumbers past, barefoot children in worn clothes smile and welcome the visitors to Siete de Abril. Men carrying firewood and machetes say hola --hello.

Chickens, pigs and dogs roam freely in the shade of banana trees and coconut palms. Papayas hang from trees behind some houses.

The sound of hammering, English and Spanish voices, and handsaws is everywhere. To the 70 families who live in this poor squatter village, it's the sound of hope.

The Americans--conspicuous with their pale skin and stylish shorts, tennis shoes and ball caps--are patching up the scant dwellings. They work in six crews, using building materials purchased in town. Every morning for a week, they board a hired bus from a Catholic retreat center in El Progreso, where they are staying, to the village. An armed guard rides with them.

Ten are here from the Stafford and Rappahannock Rotary Clubs, along with 25 students with the Campus Christian Community at the University of Mary Washington. Several others are with Students Helping Honduras, including Shin and Cosmo Fujiyama--the brother-and-sister team who have coordinated relief projects in El Progreso for more than a year now.

Shin, 23, in his final year at UMW, first came to Honduras three years ago as a student volunteer. That journey was the catalyst for a Honduras connection that has grown into a movement, involving multiple groups from the Fredericksburg area, from the college to businesspeople to churches.

Siete de Abril means "April 7," the date in 1999 when the village was founded to provide a place for refugees from Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Honduras the previous year.

Whole villages were wiped out in floods and mudslides, but unlike in America when Hurricane Katrina hit, there were no government subsidies, no checks in the mail to help rebuild, no massive flood of volunteers.

The displaced were allowed to move in after the storm and build whatever shelter they could. And they've stayed.

Go to fredericksburg.com to view additional photos from this story and to order photo reprints. All reprint proceeds will be donated to Students Helping Honduras.

Date published: 1/21/2007