Peter Dunlop 15 / Computer Science

President, Students Helping Honduras

Peter:

The University of Maryland chapter of Students Helping

Honduras has helped build at least five schools in rural and
impoverished areas outside of El Progresso. Uh what these
schools mean is that the kids in these villages no longer
have to walk uh, miles to get an education in a different
part of uh, town sometimes across busy highways where
they could be picked up and kidnapped by gangs. (5:04-22)

Peter:

A lot of aid organizations are afraid to go there because of

the violence. It is so persistent. Honduras is the highest in
murder rate of any country in the world. It's the most
dangerous place outside of an active war zone. (8:22-35)

Peter:

If kids aren't going to school there, uh most of the time it

means that um, they're either hanging out at home you
know running around trying to help their families earn
income or unfortunately what it means a lot of the times is
that they are joining gangs like M.S.13 and Mara 18. (3:2439)

Peter:

It costs about $25,000 to build a school. We have letter

writing campaigns, we have bake sales on campus, we sell
shirts we're often selling um, pizza and stuff late at night.
We often just look for where ever we can find an
opportunity to raise you know a couple hundred bucks.
(5:53-6:12)

Peter:

The Do Good Challenge is a campus competition to see

which student organization can do the most good using
social media and other platforms to kind of get their
message out there. For us, it was huge because what it
meant was that we were finally able to raise the full
$25,000 when we won the Do Good Challenge and we won
$8,500. (6:47-7:11)

Peter:

We go down um, every year in the winter what we do is

we work to uh build the school We're laying bricks,
leveling out the floors um, doing other ... digging trenches
uh, foundations and stuff, mixing concrete, other like
construction related activities. (7:30-38 8:00-10)

Peter:

As soon as you go down and you meet these kids and you
meet these families and you see how much of a difference

that this school makes to them. And you see how much of
a difference your couple hours a day makes to these
families, uh, you know it's ... you can't not help but be
involved. (11:07-21)