Elevating Education with New Programs in 2026
We believe in lifelong learning. Years ago, the general belief in our catchment area was that learning happened in school and school was for little kids. Today, people of all ages are interested in learning to fill gaps in their knowledge.
Let’s start with programs for the youngest and go to the eldest …
Launched in January 2026. Feeding Moms & Babies - success in school, and life, depends on early childhood development, including in utero. A grant from the Zondervan Foundation, boosted our plan to provide daily, a balanced meal, vitamin, toothbrushing, and stories read aloud to all the preschool children, including infants, in a remote and very poor indigenous community. Pregnant and lactating women also eat lunch there to improve neonatal and newborn health. We are measuring each child monthly to compare their growth rates to international standards.
Launched in April 2026. Schoolbooks - with donations given to our General Fund, we purchased $18,000 of schoolbooks so that each primary school student in 11 communities would have a full set of current textbooks. NOTE: we were not replacing old books; the teachers were teaching without any books.
Published in 2026, the Taking Care of You teen program about sex education and health was devised and presented by Karla Molinero MD and Cesar Alas MD. This program with eight 3-hour sessions on changes in adolescence, relationships and decision making and had open discussions on health risks like gangs, tattoos, alcohol, and many other topics. It yielded important data about who learned, who was less engaged, and how very important it was to teens and their parents. Read it here.
Launched in June 2026. Teen Leadership. La Fuerza para el Futuro (Force for the Future), ACTS’ teen leadership program recentered with focus on preparing for careers in the formal economy and improving the community with ambitious service projects.
Launched in May 2026. A university telecenter in El Rosario makes distance learning a reality. We partnered with Universidad Tecnologica Honduras (UTH) to provide university degree programs via a telecenter in El Rosario. A Star Link connection and generous donors providing laptop computers and tuition funding is making the dream of university come true for the first cohort of six students ages 21- 37 years old. Very important: the students live at home and maintain their responsibilities to their families including caring for their children and elderly parents.
Launched in April 2026. Training Farmers - Screw worm is a devastating fly larvae multiplying in Central America that can kill an animal in less than a day by laying eggs in any skin opening. ACTS veterinarian Brad Taylor taught local farmers to protect their animals with frequent inspections and how to respond with a drug treatment to save the animal. Going further, he taught the leaders how to set up and manage a small-scale veterinary pharmacy stocked with the lifesaving drugs.
Launched in May 2026. The new Junta de Agua (Water Board) is learning how to manage a utility in compliance with Honduran laws regarding water quality testing, equitable distribution, and the Junta’s fiduciary responsibilities.
Launched in April 2026. Taking Care of Elders is funded by the Dr. Margo Krasnoff Fund to improve the lives of the elderly in El Rosario. Monthly meetings include educational sessions on health and wellness topics such as nutrition for elders with Type 2 Diabetes and foot care.
Foundations of Education
ACTS’ goal is increasing the scope and breadth of local education to improve quality of life and employment opportunities. On average, farmers in the area have had just three years of schooling. Today, to be compete for a job in the formal economy of Honduras requires a high school diploma.
Honduran elementary schools are joint ventures between the government and each community. If a community can construct a school building and fill it with children, the government will provide a teacher and their salary. Everything else is up to each community and where most communities have nothing to spare, they cannot enrich the educational environment. Moreover, most residents have never seen anything different. Many children drop out before 6th grade.
ACTS enriches elementary education by providing in-school pediatric dental screening and treatment, hosting a library that is a popular destination for school field trips, repairs to school buildings, and stocking picture books, early readers, and elementary-appropriate reference materials in each school.
Several years ago, when two hurricanes struck in a two-week period, ten schools were badly damaged, and ACTS provided $10,000 in grants to cover materials for repairs to roofs and other necessities as prioritized by local leaders. In 2026, our teams completed data collection on every school to document needs and develop our strategies to fill the gaps. The top priority was getting schoolbooks into the classrooms, which was completed in April 2026 with full sets of books for each school.
Reopening the local high school. ACTS took on reinvigorating the school after a 3-year shutdown during the pandemic; it was an unprecedented challenge. ACTS made it an all-hands priority and in collaboration with a new and comprehensive local Education Committee used creativity, enthusiasm, and problem solving techniques to build a recruiting program staffed by local leaders. Their dogged efforts repopulated the school and together we managed to restore and improve the campus, add hundreds of new books to the library, and install appropriate furnishings and hygiene facilities. Now that it is on steady footing, the local teachers are responsible for the enterprise.
Computer training is a valuable skill in the job market. Young adults from 11 communities attend the free computer course at the regional Community Education Center in El Rosario. There is a 1-year wait list for the course, which is limited by the size of the classroom and number of computers. The curriculum focuses on the Microsoft Office suite of applications.
Women are learning to grow vegetables in kitchen gardens. Big-field farming is the purview of males. Women established the Hope and Faith Garden Group, advised by Dean Seibert, and began learning how to diversify their families’ diets by experimenting with drip irrigation, seed saving, and other systems to grow vegetables in their new kitchen gardens to diversify their diets and learn new skills together.
Taking Care of You is a teen health education series. Drs. Cesar Alas and Karla Molineros, early career Honduran MDs designed a lively curriculum and met the challenge of keeping 78 teens engaged in serious topics during eight 3-hour sessions ranging from acne to sexual decision making and tattoos. Students received certificates of participation that will be added to their academic CVs. Taking Care of You is funded by the Dr. Margot Krasnoff Fund.
The colegio is part of the SAT educational system for private colegios in Honduras. Our meeting with Blanca Ucles, leader of 17 SAT schools in the department of Yoro, helped us define our goal. Her strongest recommendation was, “Get the parents and community involved. They need to know this is their school, even if they don’t have children enrolled.”
We told the students we were bringing 700 new books. Set loose to enjoy the books, they sank into the pleasure of a brand-new top-quality book. The teachers were thrilled too; one had a firm grip on a gorgeous full-color chemistry book and said, “Science is my thing.” This purchase was made possible by a generous gift from the Zondervan Foundation.
At the Community Education Center in El Rosario, ACTS-funded computer classes are free to everyone. Teacher Yorlin Castro manages the classroom activities and does most of the computer repairs. In 2024, ACTS replaced a third of the laptops with new machines and will do so again in 2025 and 2026.
The government funds teachers’ salaries at community K-6 schools, but building construction and upkeep are the responsibility of the community. After two hurricanes in two weeks, several years ago, ten village schools were damaged, and ACTS stepped in to fund repairs including the roof on this school in La Concepcion.
With hundreds of new books, it was a fun meeting with the El Rosario librarians to determine where they should be displayed and how the two libraries would initiate an “inter-library loan” process. One librarian said, “This is nicest collection of books for a school in the entire country.”
A partnering Honduran educational supply company helped us to transport a generous collection of new books for the two libraries in El Rosario. Here we met by the side of the road to transfer boxes from Ibrahim’s truck to ours.
In the community of Los Planos, the school was in poor shape before the hurricanes and required significant repairs after the storms. Typically, a ‘constructor,’ who builds as his trade, is assisted by local men who volunteer and provide the menial labor. ACTS funds the materials and the wages of the constructor.
We are making deliberate progress to improve the colegio experience and attract more students by “thinking like a kid,” and augmenting didactic sessions with lively activities and fun.