Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Losing Another Generation to Illiteracy

Once upon a time, the writer of this particular blog post had a boss who used to say, “I have iterated and I have iterated,” when driving home a point concerning what a bunch of lunkheads her staff was. Get it? She had REiterated. This post is all about iterating and iterating the importance of getting backpacks into the hands of Honduran children. 

Our North American brains often have difficulty comprehending that there are school age children in Honduras who can’t attend public school without assistance. Oh, sure, we understand when private schools offer scholarships, but it is out of our normal experiences to think about children not going to the free public school because of a lack of basic school supplies and shoes. You are hereby challenged to walk through your house counting how many pens and pencils you find. This lunkhead has an embarrassing amount.


If we can’t get the necessary supplies into the hands of these children, they will become another educationally lost generation. The locations that receive backpacks often see the number of kids attending school double within a two year period. Education doesn’t just benefit the individual. It benefits the community. The communities where more children attend school are actually becoming healthier. More people are brushing their teeth. More people understand the importance of better diets, frequent handwashing, etc. This is happening one backpack at a time (or 100+ at a time within a community!). 


The Sowers4Pastors backpack collection committee (ie, Allen, Trish, Russell, Kirstin, and Kelsea) is already in the planning stages of their next backpack collection trip. Now is the time to contact Allen or Trish if you would like to be added to the collection map. Maybe you’re undecided and need to talk over some specifics. Contact Allen or Trish. They are already scheduled to pick up from many locations, but that means that there’s a good chance they’ll be heading your way. They are only one crew of people and they need to plan their route out in advance.  


Sowers4Pastors makes filling backpacks as easy as possible. They will even supply the empty backpacks! Then they drive by and pick up the bounty. Don’t feel that you have to do this all on your own. Recruit family, friends, and neighbors to help you purchase the needed school supplies. Maybe your church or your children’s schools would like to become involved. A lot of people have had excellent success by putting up Facebook posts and getting friends to join in their efforts to send kids in Honduras to school. One woman spread the word to her friends within her neighborhood and now it is a community project. Sowers4Pastors wants to talk to anyone interested in filling backpacks. 


COVID-19 sent the attendance numbers of kids going to school in the wrong direction and it’s time to make a big push to get the numbers back up. It would be a tremendous blessing to collect a lot of backpacks in 2021, and then turn those backpacks into higher attendance at school for the poor communities of Honduras.


Obviously, the point of all this isn't just to save these communities from a cycle of illiteracy - there is the spiritual aspect as well. Allen loves to say that the feeding centers feed kids spiritually as well as physically. The same can be said of the backpack project. Through cooperation with the local schools, S4P sees to it that these kids are also educated, in addition to being feed spiritually and physically.



To learn more about this or to get your supply of empty backpacks, you can email trish@sowers4pastors.com. You can also send Trish a note through FB Messenger. If you're not friends with her, you can send a message to Sowers4Pastors through Facebook. They’d love to talk to you about it. Some topics can’t be iterated and iterated enough! 


- posted by Christi


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