Lic Lorena (our AMAZING director at the Finca), Lic Madeleine (our social worker at the Finca), Christian (our Finca driver), & I embarked on a journey on Monday, September 9th to visit two different children’s homes that are relatively close to the Finca. As I am typing this blog on Friday, September 13th and as we make our way back to the Finca today after lunch, it has been an incredible journey to learn more about other children’s homes in Honduras and to share best practices.
Lorena & Madeleine are doing a study of staff retention, especially among tías y tíos that are the primary caretakers of the children, in a number of children’s homes in Honduras that have gracefully opened their doors to our work. This is such an important study for the sustainability and the success of the Finca! We are hopeful that our leadership team and our board of directors here in Honduras can make lasting and meaningful changes to our tía model in the Finca.
Our tías in the Finca undoubtedly have the most impactful role in the kids’ lives, as they are the primary guardians of the children & are with the kids 24/7 for two or three months at a time prior to a few weeks of vacation with their families. However, I believe that it is also the most difficult job at the Finca due to the nature of having to take care of children that aren’t their own 24/7 for months at a time. They do receive a break when the kids are in school or when missionaries, Sores, or Lics take the kids to do a fun activity, but, nonetheless, it is an exhausting role that wears on a tía over time.
Due to the importance of the role in the kids’ lives and the relatively high turnover that we see in our tías at the Finca, the staff retention study is meant to learn best practices in how other children’s homes take care of their staff and execute working schedules. We recognize that the Finca is a beautiful mission with an abundance of love and joy inside of our fence, but we also recognize that we can improve and MUST improve for the future of our children and for the satisfaction of our tías.
I joined Lorena & Madeleine on the trip to Francisco Morazán and Olancho to meet the volunteer/missionary communities at the two children’s homes, to learn best practices on having both missionaries from the United States and Central America, and to form a relationship between our volunteer programs that can be beneficial for all parties in the future. I recognize that our Finca missionary program has some real strengths and does a lot of things really well, but I also recognize that we must continue to grow and improve the program for the peace, love, and joy of current and future missionaries. We can get better & we MUST get better. LIFELONG LEARNING, RIGHT?!
We first visited NPH, or Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, which is a HUGE children’s home about 7 hours from the Finca just outside of Tegucigalpa in the departamento (or state) of Francisco Morazán. They have an astonishing 2,200 acres, over 200 children present on their site, several community projects designed to help the outside communities and limit the need for children to be removed from their families someday, and volunteers from several countries, including Honduras, the United States, and Colombia.
Needless to say, it is an astonishing project! It is obviously not perfect, but they do a lot of things really well that Lorena, Madeleine, and I are hopeful to take back to the Finca. They have INCREDIBLE retention of tías y tíos, as some employees have been working in the same house on their campus for over 15 or 20 years. They have a unique working model that allows them to have entire days off every week and to avoid the burnout that plagues tías at the Finca.
I was also able to have really awesome and beneficial conversations with Natalie, their Volunteer Coordinator, and several other volunteers from Latin American countries on what will be necessary to create and sustain a missionary community at the Finca with missionaries from both the United States and Central America. I was able to learn a lot of ways that we can grow and improve our missionary community, and I am excited to implement some of those strategies in the coming months and years.
Our next stop was in Catacamas, Olancho, which is the biggest departmento in Honduras. Catacamas is about 5 hours away from the Finca via the beautiful road connecting Trujillo to Tegucigalpa. The mission is called “Family Life Missions”, and the children’s home within the mission is specifically called “Por Los Niños”. This mission has a much different model and does some REALLY awesome work aiding and supporting the local communities, which we are also hopeful to do in the future with the Frisbee Center. They only have 7 kids on their site and about 5 acres, and they don’t have any full-time volunteers or missionaries. Nonetheless, it was beautiful to pick their brains on how they execute week-long mission trips that they receive from the United States every year, which I am constantly looking to refine and improve.
As we head back to the Finca today, I am overcome with two emotions after our quick visits to NPH and Family Life Missions:
Please pray for our three new long-term missionaries that will arrive at the Finca in just over two weeks!! Our last class of long-term Finca missionaries was an objective disaster that challenged the Finca’s core values and principles, so please pray for our new missionaries’ smooth transition and their ability to peacefully integrate into the community.
Please let me know how I can pray for you!
God Bless!