In La Sorto the treasurer of the youth group goes over the accounts with junior leader, Eduardo Gonzales, age 20.

In 2006 La Semilla del Progreso provided agricultural vocational education for groups of youth in four villages. The teens in these groups have responded with enthusiasm, embracing the idea of having their own agricultural projects. Now the hours of labor they have put in are bringing forth great harvests. The agricultural training and inspiration provided by La Semilla has been able to restore the term "farmer" as a viable vocational option for these youth. Success is also due to the fact that parents, grandparents, and often siblings are actively involved in the program. For example, it is usually parents or grandparents who provide their sons and daughters with parcels of land to put into practice their newly learned farming knowledge.

History

Unemployment and underemployment is estimated at 30% in Honduras, the highest in all of Central America. Honduras also has Central America’s fastest rural to urban migration, which continues even though there are not city jobs for youth migrating to the cities. Many rural youth feel there are no options and some decide to go "North". Some get captured and returned worse off. Others die. Those who succeed may endure illegal migrant working conditions never imagined. Flight "North" separates parents, grandparents and children. Local farm parents who had doubled harvests due to sustainable farming practices taught by La Semilla del Progreso asked Laureano, program director, "Isn’t there something you can do for our teenage children? We are afraid of losing them". In 2001, La Semilla began a program of Agricultural Vocational Training for groups of rural youth 14 to 22 years of age.

These coffee seedlings, a teen’s agricultural project, will be planted on the contour of a steep hillside where they will hold the soil & prevent erosion.

Training

During the first year of training, the youth receive two 5-day residential courses at the La Semilla Center, with follow-up classes in the local community and individual visits to the project of each student by Laureano Jacobo, director of La Semilla. For each new youth group, Laureano appoints a junior leader. This is a former student who has demonstrated enthusiasm and had excellent projects. In the second year, the staff of La Semilla goes to the community for classes and group meetings. They also regularly visit all of the students’ individual projects to give encouragement and instruction.

Training Expands Into New Areas

After providing structured instruction to a youth group for approximately 2 years, La Semilla del Progreso moves on to begin work with new groups in other villages. In 2006, two new groups were started and two other groups received the second year of instruction.

Quiraguira - a new group with 28 members
Plan Masaguara - a new group with 18 members
San José - a second year group with 22 members
La Sorto - a second year group with 22 members

To prevent soil erosion, these brothers from San José dug water conserving contour ditches and then planted taro on the upper ridge.

In addition to these 84 students in active instruction, La Semilla keeps in contact with many past students. In April 2006, La Semilla gave a 5-day course on Strategic Planning to 22 of the most outstanding past students. Five sustainable agriculture extensionists from Guatemala came to Honduras to observe this course and visit the Agricultural Vocational Program.

Positive Spin-Off

An amazing thing happened this year in the community of La Sorto. The first middle school in the history of the village was built! This might not seem remarkable if it weren’t for the context of Honduras. According to information from the U.S. Library of Congress, Honduras suffers from an illiteracy rate of 80 percent in the rural areas. Nationally only 30 percent of children entering the first grade go on to middle school. La Semilla’s work with youth groups motivated La Sorto to organize, resulting in the initiation of a collaborative program of educa-tion. This innovative educational program was developed in Colombia and is known as the "System for Tutorial Learning" or "SAT" (Spanish acronym for Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial). With support from the World Bank, it was adopted throughout Colombia to improve the quality of rural education.

The community movement for more educational opportunities began in August, 2004, when this group of boys in La Sorto asked to receive agricultural training.

It was shown that graduates of the SAT program gained comprehensive knowledge in animal husbandry, agriculture, soil chemistry and many fields associated with rural vocations. They also knew how to create micro-enterprises and partici-pate in community development. This first school year there are 37 youth enrolled in the new SAT program in La Sorto. This is a most remarkable result of initial work of EPIC and La Semilla organizing the youth for instruction in sustainable agriculture.

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