Paul and Laura Manship, Author at Shoulder to Shoulder, Inc.

March 21, 2022August 3, 2023

Hens Hatching Hope Honored

By Laura Manship – Executive Director

Hens Hatching Hope

Shoulder to Shoulder is thrilled to announce that we were chosen as GlobalGiving’s October 2021 PROJECT OF THE MONTH for our Hens Hatching Hope: Un Huevo Cada Dia program!Our work in providing micro-loans to women so that they can raise hens was selected from a pool of more than 5,000 nonprofit projects in 170+ countries. Nearly 3,000 donors come together and make monthly donations to keep the Project of the Month going.

This extra support means the world to us—and to the community in Intibucá, Honduras. Over the course of the next year, we’ll use these additional funds to expand our network of small women-run hens and eggs businesses. Our goal is two-fold: (1) to increase the current 25 hen-hatching businesses to 30 and (2) to provide an egg a day to 400 children, from our current 300 children.

We can’t thank you enough for your continued compassion and generosity.

With gratitude,

Laura Manship

Executive Director

January 15, 2022August 3, 2023

Tablets Bring Dropped-Out Students Back to School

By Edel Andino – Information Technology Director

Father signing so daughter can take tablet home.

We are pleased to say that in 2021, we delivered 3500 computer tablets to 51 junior/senior high schools.To begin, I want to talk about students dropping out of school. Many of the students who had dropped out, or were in danger of dropping out, returned to schools motivated by using this new technology.

We have seen that some students who have difficulties doing or wanting to do their homework, now due to this new resource they do it more effectively and quickly.

Many of the teachers have been encouraging recreational and assignment reading; but there are also students who have read on their own, beyond the readings assigned by teachers.

We could also see that some parents who were initially afraid to take the tablet because of the responsibility that it meant at home, decided to take it after they saw that the other students were progressing better and more productively than their children.

Among the things that we can observe in the teachers is that they are happy and motivated with the software especially because the students like it much. We receive expressions from some teachers that the resource is serving themselves as reinforcement, mostly in mathematics.

As I said, at the beginning of this project, the learning curve normally takes between 3 to 6 months. We have great hopes for the success of the program once the adaptation period is over and the learning curve has passed.

Student with tablet.

December 15, 2021August 3, 2023

Delivery of Educational Materials

By Nelly Milla Milla – Scholarship Coordinator

Nelly delivering materials to scholarship students

April and May 2021: I held meetings with parents and student beneficiaries of the scholarship program, in the municipalities of: San Antonio, Camasca, Magdalena and Concepción. In the municipality of Santa Lucia, no meeting was held due to the restriction measures against Covid-19 that it had at that time due to the high incidence of Covid-19 cases. However, coordination was carried out with a counselor from the educational center via telephone. The objective of the meetings was the presentation of those responsible for the scholarship program at the local level, as well as to publicize the new structure of the program that will be executed during this school year.September 2021: I communicated with the Counselors of each Educational Center, to monitor and evaluate the performance of each recipient. Despite being an unusual year due to the pandemic, and due to the dropping out of many young people who left Honduras to migrate to the US, the students did very well.

October 2021: I was contacted by the counselors of the beneficiary institutions to inform me that the graduation dates were approaching and the young people needed help with their graduation costs. StS agreed to provide support to these young people after formalizing the application for financial aid for graduation.

End of School Year 2021: 21 scholarship students have graduated from High School:

7 in Computer Science
5 in Social Promotion
4 in Business Administration
3 in Sciences and Humanities
1 in Accounting and Finance
1 in Electricity

The students thank the Donors for their support!