It was such a blessing for me to last minute be asked to come down to Honduras and film a promo film for a new company, Generous Coffee. The three awesome guys behind this company are Riley, Ben, and Drew, whom also happen to be founders and board members of the non-profit, Humanity and Hope United.
Currently we are in very pre-limary stages of Generous, so I knew that the 5 days I was going to be down there with the guys were going to be filled with new adventures for all of us, as we had no idea which coffee farms we were visiting, who we'd be meeting, where we'd be staying, etc.
I'm creating a whole separate blog post about our Generous road-trip and research that I'll share soon, but for now I wanted to share the days that I was in Honduras outside of the Generous trip. I didn't know that I was going to get to meet and spend time with a 26 person crew from Humanity and Hope that was down there at the same time, a group being led by Ben and his mom the previous week. IT WAS SUCH A PLEASANT SURPRISE! It was so wonderful getting to know the people on the team, whom were (for the most part) all new to H&H. I could already tell that they had built some very strong friendships amongst each other, and I was happy to get to be a part of it for the last 48 hours of their trip.
With that, I also got to spend time with them in the village of La Caroza and reunite with the cute kiddos that I met in February when I was there earlier this year. Loving on these sweet faces and seeing their smiles never gets old! It was fun to see how well the 26 person H&H team not only connected so well with each other, but also connected with and had already made such an impact with the families and children in the villages.
One of my favorite stories from their week was how one little girl was unable to attend school one day because she didn't have any shoes to wear. An H&H team member, Sarah (whom I was so blessed to get to know, she has the biggest heart!), was the only one made aware of the situation at the time, by the girl's concerned friend, and immediately said, "Well, let's go get her shoes!" With Darwin's help, they went and bought some shoes, and the girl was able to attend school that day. I love so many things about this story. One, that the girl's friend was so concerned about her friend not being able to go to school. Two, that Sarah is such a humble soul that nobody on the team even knew about what happened until the end of the week. Three, that there was a moment shared at the end of the week that Sarah spoke with the two girls and told them how inspired she was by the strength of their friendship, and let them know that if they can be there for each other through something like that, then that kind of friendship will be a solid rock for them throughout their entire lives, in any kind of situation. Sarah's words and tears also brought tears to the girl without the shoes, and it was such a special moment that I'm so glad I got to capture. I included a series of a few photos of that moment, just because it was so touching to not only see how much the girls' friendship inspired Sarah, but how powerful Sarah's words of encouragement were to the two young girls.
We also spent a day in Remolino with the new "health squad" for H&H finding out health concerns and needs of the village in order to bring a health program/clinic/care system to them in the near future. Along with visiting household to household and doing some data analysis, we hung out more with the children, and witnessed again just how labor-intensive both the women's jobs are with the sheep and pigs and the men's jobs are in the fields. It is insanely inspiring to see how hard these people work for $7.50 US/day. Which to them, is a lot.
I also loved getting to spend more time with Catherine and Androlla, two of the translators that live in Honduras, that also have huge hearts! They are such a blessing to H&H and the villagers absolutely adore them.
After the Generous trip, we also came back to spend a few hours in a new village, La Cuchilla, that H&H intends on working with in the future, who currently has zero electricity and no access to clean water. The village of 27 families lives in 20 small homes, and shares ONE well to manually get their water, and still must boil the water before it's even okay to drink. Can you imagine living in that heat and having to pull up your own water from a well and boil it before you can even drink a glass of water to quench your thirst? It was heart-breaking to witness first-hand and I'm thankful H&H has connected with these wonderful people to help their community prosper! I truly look forward to seeing these families again in the very near feature and can't wait to be a part of bringing hope and prosperous change into their lives. Just look at how joyful they are right now with so little... imagine the smiles on their faces once they can drink water without getting sick and find out there is opportunity for them to experience jobs and education.
Once again, I left Honduras completely humbled with a heart full joy, hope, and gratitude. A kind of joy that literally hurts my face from smiling so much, a kind of hope that inspires me to share their story and get more people involved, and a kind of gratitude that encourages me to invest all that I have into these people - their communities, their hearts, and their new opportunities.
Find out more about the vision of Humanity and Hope by clicking here.
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