Conference on Honduras Recap

Last week, I attended and spoke at the Conference on Honduras in Copan, and it was a great experience. Douglas and Mizael joined me and we learned a lot about what different organizations, governmental and non-governmental, are doing throughout the country.  There were educational institutions, the UN Volunteers, the US Ambassador to Honduras (with a bunch of not-so Secret Service guys), orphan care providers, church planters, medical providers, missions directors, coffee businesses, musicians, leadership training organizations, entrepreneurs, media outlets, and several others.  Check out www.hondurasweekly.com for an article on the conference if you want more details.

It was extremely informative and encouraging to Douglas, Mizael, and me because it showed us that we are on the right track with the La Provdencia model, and a replicable best practice model framework is a huge need amongst the orphan care providers.  Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the orphanages are working on tight budgets and have very little research or other information to help them strive toward excellence at their orphanage.  They are simply getting by and doing the best with what they have.  As I discussed during my talk, I am excited that we at PWM are able to provide our children at La Providencia with excellence in every area, and simultaneously test our theories on best practices out at La Providencia.  And then, we are able to inform, educate, train, empower, and encourage others with what God teaches us in the process.  When we work with other organizations, we also (and this is just as important and valuable) are able to learn from what they have learned and we can all think bigger and get better together.  This promotes efficiency and stewardship of resources by allowing us to not have to re-invent the wheel every time we do something at the orphanage, and it also promotes a culture in which we constantly challenge each other to get better and not accept mediocrity.

One other thing that the conference did was reinforce the desperate need for us to define our terms in orphan care (and other areas) with specificity and care to ensure that we are all talking about the same things, rather than talking past each other and "disagreeing" when in fact we are talking about completely different things because we didn't define our terms.  The word "orphanage" is a perfect example, as it means very different things to different people.  Most people think of some variety of "Annie" or "Oliver Twist," which definitely exist in the world. But there are also some amazing orphanages, such as La Providencia, that are full of love, families, top-quality education, great medical care and nutrition, spiritual development, self-sustainability projects, and integration in the community.  The fact is that some orphanages are incredible places, and others are terrible places.  Don't lump them all into the same category and throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We can't be lazy in this conversation because too many lives are at stake, and orphanages are very necessary part of the orphan care equation - we need to fully understand that we can't address the current orphan crisis without orphanages.  And because of that fact, we need to demand nothing less than excellence and best practices from our orphanages at every turn.