Winchester Resident Recalls Volunteer Trip to Honduras

The following was submitted by Julie Dalton:

Extreme poverty seems insurmountable, unstoppable. It’s growing with uncomfortable momentum. As those of us fortunate enough to have safe homes to live in, view images of poverty on the evening news, it can feel distant, like it doesn’t belong to us. 

But poverty belongs to all of us. It belongs to Winchester, Boston, America and the world.  

And it belongs to a girl named Daniela who lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

I met her in March this year when I traveled to Honduras to an orphanage called El Hogar. I went there with a work team of 12 women ranging from our 20s to our 70s. Our goal was to work, to pour cement, paint walls, help in the classrooms and spend time with the children. 

I did not go to El Hogar with the intention of spending time in the infirmary. But that’s where I met Daniela. She was wheezing, coughing, struggling for breath at a group assembly one morning. I recognized the short, shallow breaths, the uncomfortable posture.

I looked at her and saw my own daughters, all of whom have asthma. I thought about our numerous Emergency Room visits, the nebulizer treatments at 3 am.  I thought about rubbing my little girls’ backs as their wheezing vibrated in my fingertips. 

Daniela had only been at El Hogar for a few weeks when I met her. Having spent most of her life living in prison with her mother who was serving time on drug charges, Daniela’s asthma had gone unchecked her whole life.

She saw a doctor at El Hogar that day and got an inhaler, steroids and antibiotics. But, unlike my children, she didn’t get to go home to a mother who would rub her back. She rested alone in the infirmary.

So I stayed with her that day. We talked. She tried, unsuccessfully, to teach me to knit. We made animals out of clay. She taught me the names of the animals in Spanish, and I taught her the English words. And I rubbed her back, acutely aware of the familiar vibrations in her lungs.

Her shy smile and reluctant giggles got under my skin and she wiggled her way into my heart. When I came home and told my family about Daniela, about growing up in a prison, that she had asthma just like them, that she didn’t even know how old she was because no one remembered when she was born, my kids were silent for a few minutes.

One of my girls ran upstairs and brought down a twenty-dollar bill from her savings. She asked if she could sponsor Daniela. I explained that it cost more than $20 to sponsor a child at El Hogar, to pay for their housing, education, healthcare, food and clothing. Pretty soon all my kids were offering me money, and together we agreed that our family would commit to supporting her at El Hogar.

By sponsoring her, we are playing a small part in breaking the cycle of poverty that traps so many children. She is getting an excellent education, and will learn a trade. She is safe and healthy, and has a bright future. Most importantly, she is valued and loved by her teachers, her dorm mates -- and by my family. 

We exchange letters now, and I’m determined to go back to El Hogar to see Daniela soon. My oldest daughter went to El Hogar with the youth group from our church last year, my husband plans to go next year, and our second daughter hopes to go in two years.

Most people in Winchester don’t know that El Hogar Ministries is headquartered right here in town at 70 Church St. More than 80 people in Winchester and the surrounding communities sponsor children like Daniela at El Hogar. Over 100 of your neighbors have been to El Hogar in the past 7 years.  And you can go too.  You just need to be willing to work and to open your heart.

Volunteers paint, dig, read, teach, translate, garden, and build walls, among other things. And they fall head over heels in love with the children who live there. 

I left a piece of my heart with Daniela. In exchange, I took home the responsibility for a poverty that I once thought did not belong to me. The reality is, we all share in the responsibility for poverty, in Honduras, in the world and right here in Massachusetts.

You, too, can help break the cycle of poverty by supporting El Hogar whose mission it is to help the poorest children of Honduras “fulfill their ultimate potential”.

Join us on Sunday, Oct. 23 at 2 p.m. on the for the 3rd Annual El Hogar 5K Walkathon and 30K Bikeathon. Spend a beautiful fall day with hundreds of El Hogar supporters as we walk or bike to raise needed funds. After your walk or ride, enjoy food, music, balloons and face painting on the Common. For more information about this event, visit www.elhogar.org

To learn more about sponsoring a child, travelling to El Hogar or if you just want to find out more about this life-changing organization, call Liz Kinchen, the Executive Director of El Hogar Ministries at 781-729-7600 or visit the El Hogar website at www.elhogar.org