About HOI

Our Mission:

To improve the lives of the citizens of the Agalta Valley of Central Honduras and the lives of North Americans who visit there.

Honduras Outreach is a non-denomination, Christian organization dedicated to building life-changing relationships between the people of the Olancho department of Honduras and caring North Americans and other nationalities. Rancho el Paraiso is the focal point of the Honduras Outreach ministry and is located in the department of Olancho in central Honduras.

The Honduran government had previously identified Olancho as an area with one of the highest concentrations of infant mortality, and poverty. The median rural family income is less than $400 and 68 of 1,000 children will die before reaching age five. HOI has made a significant impact on reducing infant mortality in the last ten years with the public health and medical ministry. Our Economic Development and Vocational Schools have increased the median rural family income by well over 400%.

Nearly every week during the year, we arrange for groups of volunteers from the United States to travel to Rancho el Paraiso, our 800-acre working ranch in the Agalta Valley of Central Honduras. From that base, the North Americans work side- by-side with Hondurans from nearby villages on community projects that range from replacing earthen floors with cement to helping establish schools, medical clinics, micro enterprises and public health facilities.

This is a region without the advantages many of us take for granted. Most of the Hondurans in our valley live in small, one or two-room homes made of sticks, mud and clay. They are subsistence farmers who take occasional jobs to supplement meager incomes. Running water and electricity are still luxuries, as are roads that are passable in both dry and rainy seasons. Yet the valley residents are rich in other ways - in a sense of connection to their surroundings and their community and in their everyday joy in living.

No matter how much they miss the comforts of their lives back home, our visitors find much to appreciate in the Hondurans' approach to their lives. That means the teaching and the sharing move in both directions, from the visiting North Americans to the native Hondurans and back again.

Even though the rewards of this partnership can be counted in material ways - in the number of schools and clinics built, in the scholarships funded, in the small business opportunities created - most people tell us their real sense of accomplishment goes deeper. Those who join us in Honduras and let the people of the valley into their lives say they will never be the same.