During the first three years of our work in Honduras we followed the lead of other NGOs and agencies by supporting and accompanying actions, advocacy and mobilization processes with a perspective of true empowerment of community organizations that work and struggle to improve the living conditions of their people.

We contributed to recuperating the historical memory of the organizations and social movements through the publication of 1,000 copies each of three research projects:  “Straight as Pine Trees,” which narrates the life, thought and action of six outstanding environmental directors who were assassinated in the last 10 years because of their struggle to defend the environment; “They Chose Life,” which systematizes the work experience and struggle of the Olancho Environmental Movement (MAO); and “Emerging Citizenship,” which tells about the organizational experience, action and advocacy of the Western Regional Patronage (PRO) association. 

Together with the Center for Human Development (CDH) and the Seed Foundation, we contributed to the emergence of the Popular Community Movement of the Southern Zone (MPC) that seeks to be a unifying force for articulation and alliances of community organizations in the southern region, which includes the departments of Choluteca and Valle and the southern part of the department of Francisco Morazán.

We held National Conferences of Community Organizations in which the directors of four regional organizations and three national organizations participated, which contributed to an exchange of experiences, drawing closer together and coordination between the organizations.  This resulted in the creation of common agendas that will serve as the basis for carrying out joint actions. 

In the framework of the new program strategy for 2008-2010, we will develop a territorial experience in the department of Olancho, specifically in the Río Telica watershed, which includes 10 municipalities.  We will begin organizing community agroforestry businesses in six communities as a pilot experience related to other organizational, formation and mobilization processes.

We will develop another pilot experience in the southern region with fruit trees and vegetable gardens in two communities in the municipality of Langue, department of Valle, through a cooperation agreement with the Seed Foundation that will have the technical responsibility for carrying out the projects.

The strategic vision is to form the territorial areas into a kind of “organizational spiral” in which the local community is articulated in the sectoral, municipal and/or regional sphere, and from there to the national, in which there are no isolated actions from the territorial point of view.  This strategy will promote the strengthening of regional social movements and, at the same time, will promote coordinated contacts and alliances in a national perspective and dimension.