Supporting Students’ Learning in Honduras

In many schools in our own neighborhoods, support for different abilities and learning styles is expected. But in other schools around the world, students with learning difficulties are overlooked, often because teachers have such full classrooms that resources and time are in short supply.

Genesis Garcia Baquedano is 8 years old and lives with her older brother, Anderson, and their parents in Honduras. Her parents work hard to support their family. Genesis’s father is a painter who struggles to find consistent work, and her mother is a street vendor who spends long hours away from home.

According to her teachers, Genesis is a collaborative and committed student who participates well in class, but she was struggling with reading, writing, and math. Her teachers recommended that Genesis attend an educational intervention program farther from home. The family could not afford to pay for transportation to the program or for Genesis’s mother to take time away from work to accompany her.

Through God’s grace, Genesis and her family were able to join the Strong Communities program facilitated by World Renew’s local partner, Association for a More Just Society (ASJ because the Spanish translation is Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa). Through the program, Genesis attended academic support sessions, where she impressed her tutors with her perseverance and enthusiasm. Now, Genesis’s teachers praise the program for the significant progress Genesis has been making at school.

Genesis’s mother also appreciates the impact the program has had on her daughter. She says Genesis is very motivated when doing her schoolwork, and the improvements in her grades are a testimony to her hard work. “I feel very happy that the program has reached the community,” she said. “I wish that in my time there had been programs like this that help families be able to be better.”