Honduran Girl Continues Education in Canada

Toronto, Canada - The chance for a bright and determined young Honduran girl to continue her education in Canada has finally been realized.

Luz Mila Castro Velasquez, one of the first graduates of our partner organization, Helping Honduras Kids’, ‘Jungle School’, has travelled to Canada. She is living with a host family just west of Toronto and will be continuing her education.

Luz Mila, 16, the oldest of 6 children, graduated from Grade 6 in Honduras in 2009. During the past several years, Luz Mila began her days at 3am helping with early morning chores before she set out on a 2.5 hour hike down a narrow jungle path with her 4 brothers and sisters to attend classes at the Jungle School. Along the way she and younger brother Mey would keep an eye out for the dangers of prowling jaguars until the sun came up and they arrived at school. While at school she excelled, even completing both grade 5 & 6 in her final year, graduating at the top of her class.

After she graduated, it was unlikely that she would have the opportunity to continue her studies in Honduras due to logistics and cost. A longtime volunteer and family stepped in and with the assistance of Helping Honduras Kids, they worked with lawyers in both Honduras and Canada over the past year and a half to find a way to bring Luz Mila’s dream of furthering her education to life by bringing her to study in Canada.

Luz Mila has been placed in a Grade 8 class at a brand new school about a 20 minute walk away from her new home; she begins classes on January 3, 2011. This past Monday she met her new principal, teacher and classmates, and is very excited to begin.

Luz Mila is a bright and brave young woman. She left her family and the life she knows, to travel by airplane for the first time, to Canada, a strange, faraway, and often very cold place.

Just last week on December 3rd, over 2 years of work was completed and Luz Mila arrived in Toronto, welcomed by her new ‘Canadian Family’. She has her own room, a closet full of donated clothes, a desk for homework, books and daily access to a computer, where we know she will be able to catch up with her studies and roll right on in to high school in September. Luz Mila shares the house with her sponsor parents, Gord & Cathy, and their niece Emily, 22, who is currently in teachers college and studying to be a French and Spanish teacher. Emily spent most of her summers as a child living in Costa Rica. She knows the language and the culture and has already been a wonderful help and friend to Luz Mila.

In Luz Mila’s first few days in Canada she has been busy; visiting neighbours and family who were all anxiously awaiting her arrival, playing in the snow, taking a trip to Niagara Falls, watching English movies and setting up email, Facebook and Skype accounts so she can keep in touch with everyone back in Honduras, and all her friends and past Jungle School volunteers who live all over the world.

After nearly 2 years of tireless efforts by Helping Honduras Kids’ Director David Ashby, Honduran lawyer Sr. Javier Canales, and the Collins Family, law in Honduras has be re-shaped. Thanks to Luz Mila, any Honduran student can now have their own opportunity to study abroad with a host family. Current Jungle School volunteer, Kyla McClure, proclaims “Amazing things do happen!”…we couldn’t agree more.