Think Creative Spring 2024

Left: Odalma Enriquez (center) at work during a café con pan in Chamelecón, a suburb of San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

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We’re going to talk about transparency through an afternoon of coffee and bread. We realized that the less we know, the more vulnerable we are. When we know more, knowledge gives us power.” - Odalma Enríquez, Intersectoral Committee in Chamelecón

agency to improve transparency on a hyperlo cal level,” says Ana Leverón, Chief of Party of CARI Honduras. By building the skills of local leaders, increasing the visibility of community-based organizations and awarding small-impact grants, CARI Honduras has fostered a network of actors working together to demand greater transparency and accountability from elected In Honduras, a lack of governmental transpar ency and widespread corruption have eroded citizens’ confidence in their public institutions and contributed to social problems including crime, gender-based violence and migration. Those problems have further marginalized already vulnerable communities. In response, local organizations and larger net works are giving leaders the tools to advocate for their communities’ needs. “You need a citizen connection so that they can say to these officials, ‘Look, these are the priorities,’” says Juliette Howitt, President of the Plataforma Amplia Nacional Liberadora (PANAL), which means the Broad National Liberation Platform. With CARI Honduras’s support, PANAL has trained dozens of leaders on public infor mation, communications and advocacy and connected them directly with government agencies to convey the challenges and gaps in services they face. After starting in the Tegu cigalpa area, PANAL is expanding its reach to other communities including San Pedro Sula, Rivera Hernández and Chamelecón. “It has been a valuable opportunity to uplift these community leaders who have enormous potential and bring them closer to institu tions,” Howitt says. “Because what we lack most in our country is leadership, too. And there is a huge number of people who have a lot of leadership.” Supporting local champions In Rivera Hernandez, an organization called Semillas Triunfadoras (Triumphant Seeds in English) is spreading knowledge about trans officials and government agencies. Advocating for communities

parency and accountability through hands-on training sessions and workshops that partici pants can replicate in their own communities. “We try to train these communities so that they learn how to move forward,” says Mauricio Fernández, the organization’s President. “Be cause we’re from the communities, and we go to the communities where they ask for us and call on us to support their development. And these people plant that little seed of knowledge so that they can triumph in the future.” Fernández said that one of Semillas Triunfad oras’ primary goals is to prepare the next gen eration of leaders to turn the tide of corruption. “We’re training kids, youth, and of course adults, but we’re already focused on the future so that this next group of young people can save our future,” he says. Across Honduras, with support from USAID/ OTI’s CARI Honduras program, youth are forming their own networks and becoming more engaged in building the future they want to see for their communities. “There wasn’t a youth network until now,” says Cristina Álvarez, coordinator of the Youth Transparency Network in El Pedregal, Tegucigalpa. “The youth themselves weren’t aware of transparency ... However, through the awareness that has been raised in different activities, I think that their way of thinking has changed.” As intersectoral committees and other com munity-based organizations have grown and ramped up their activities while maintaining strong principles of accountability themselves, residents are beginning to see them as a beacon of transparency. “I see the before and after more than anything

in the sense that with the creation of the Inter sectoral Committee, the visibility it’s had in the community and the accountability,” says César Alvarado, a pastor and member of the Pedregal Intersectoral Committee. “People from the dif ferent neighborhoods that we represent have begun to change their mentality. Now people in the community come to us, and not just here but also to leaders in different neighborhoods.” Envisioning a more transparent future Leaders in Honduras have seen how some thing as simple as a cup of coffee can catalyze conversations that may break through taboos and open the door for a community to mobilize around transparency. And now, with greater knowledge and tools to demand services and accountability from elect ed officials, the impact of leaders like Enríquez is rippling through communities. “We can say that Chamelecón has made a turn. It’s made a 90-degree turn with knowledge,” she says. “I feel proud of all of the leaders that I’ve trained, and now that we’re training. Because now we’ve become a group of leaders training other leaders.” Enríquez says that as the CARI Honduras proj ect comes to a close in 2024, she and others are committed to continuing to share the knowl edge they’ve gained. “We’ve planted a seed that allows for critical thinking about the problems that we’re seeing. We have leaders, we have connected partners on every level that are aware of the reality and that now have the resources to be able to act,” says Leverón, the Chief of Party of CARI Hon duras. “So to leave that community strength, I think that’s one of the strongest legacies that CARI can leave in Honduras.” n

Illustration by Dimiraira via iStock.com

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