Think Creative - Issue 6

Dispatches

updates from around our world

Esther (left) and her young daughter welcome Proponte Más family counselors Dinora (center) and Nadia into their home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Honduran families take the lead in building youth resilience

Honduras // Proponte Más

But today, Dinora and Nadia’s focus is on Es- ther. Parents and guardians play a crucial role in reducing risk factors and building protective factors to strengthen their kids’ resilience to gangs and violence. The family counselors therefore work to reestablish adults’ authority in the home and improve supervision. “Counseling work would not be possible with- out the willingness from parents to put into practice the recommendations we give them,” Dinora says. “If parents are organized, it will be reflected in their children, and everyone can learn from this experience.” In their previous visit, the counselors met with Esther and her husband Edilberto without the

Leaning into the doorway of her small home outside Tegucigalpa, Esther calls her four chil- dren to come take their seats on the patio. The two counselors, who are by now like part of the family themselves, have arrived. The family counselors, Dinora and Nadia, are staff from the Proponte Más secondary vio- lence prevention program, funded by USAID. Over the course of six months, the pair visit Esther’s home to strengthen their family system, with the goal of reducing the behaviors and attitudes that put her eldest child, Nandito, at risk of engaging with the gangs that claim his neighborhood as their territory.

children present. They left the parents with some homework—to schedule 30 minutes a day for the two of them to talk about family issues and their kids’ needs. Esther and Edilberto were asked to work together to establish household rules and make sure they were being followed. Esther says she is already seeing a big differ- ence in how the children behave toward one another and toward their parents. “Edilberto and I talked with the children and we put all the rules into practice. Since then, they fight less … and there is no yelling in the house,” she says. “[The counselors] have helped

Photo by José Granados

10 | Think Creative | Fall 2019