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Students to send aid

March 20, 2007 6:47 am

By RUSTY DENNEN

If a fundraiser coming up in April is successful, 72 families in a squatter village in Central America will have permanent homes and better lives, thanks to people here.

Students Helping Honduras, which has chapters at the University of Mary Washington and the College of William & Mary, will sponsor a Walkathon for Hope April 21.

It will begin at 1:30 p.m. at UMW and aims to raise $100,000. Philanthropist Doris Buffett's Sunshine Lady Foundation has agreed to chip in another $100,000 if the students reach that threshold.

"We need the help of the entire community to meet this challenge," said Shin Fujiyama, a senior at UMW and a founder of Students Helping Honduras. About $15,000 has been raised so far.

Walker Somerville, vice president of Students Helping Honduras, and a sophomore at William & Mary, said students at Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and George Mason University will also participate.

"And we're trying to get students at local high schools involved," said Somerville, who lives in Orange County.

Each student team will try to raise at least $1,400, about half the estimated cost of building one house. Meanwhile, organizers are approaching local businesses to help reach the $100,000 challenge goal.

The five-mile walkathon route will be on the UMW campus. There will be live bands, free food and free massages.

In January, The Free Lance-Star published a four-part series of stories on efforts to aid Siete de Abril, a small village in El Progreso, Honduras. Fujiyama, his sister, Cosmo, a senior at William & Mary, and the UMW Campus Christian Community have led the initiative.

Seventy-two families lead

Spartan lives in tin-roof shacks with no electricity and parasite-infested water. Most are on the bottom rung of Honduran society. They claimed the land after they were displaced by Hurricane Mitch in 1999.

Thanks to the Fujiyamas, and others, their lives have been improving. A small school was built last year, and many of the shacks were repaired in January by volunteers and donations from the Fredericksburg area. Delegations from Students Helping Honduras, the Campus Christian Community and the Stafford and Rappahannock Rotary Clubs were the most recent visitors.

The goal now, Shin Fujiyama says, is to raise enough money to build simple, block houses for each of the residents.

One critical hurdle, he said, appears to have been overcome. The village sits on land owned by the Honduran government. That may soon change.

"We were able to get the chairman of the Honduran Congress to make a personal visit" to Siete de Abril, Fujiyama said. "He went right into action and got some paperwork signed."

Thanks to financial help from Americans, the village elders now have a lawyer working for them.

If all goes as expected, "the government plans to issue them their land, free of charge, in June," Fujiyama said.

When that's done, volunteer construction teams would return to begin work on the houses. That process could take up to two years.

A walkathon at UMW last year, also aided by the Sunshine Lady Foundation, raised about $150,000 to build a dormitory and retire debt at the Copprome orphanage in El Progreso.

Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com