Honduras-Spain Program contributes to improving rural education in the country

Quezailica, Copán, April 3, 2017. – Today, Spain’s Debt Conversion Program to Honduras, which is administered by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), inaugurated the "Jesús María Rodríguez" Basic Education Center in the community of Quezailica, Santa Rosa de Copán, Department of Copán.

The school was built as part of Phase II of the Project "Construction, Equipment and Obligatory Training of Basic Education Schools from Pre-School to Ninth Grade in Communities Living in Extreme Poverty," which seeks to train young people to contribute to the development of their communities.

The project will directly benefit approximately 1,500 students and 82 teachers per year; indirectly, it will benefit 19,803 inhabitants of the municipalities of Guajiquiro, Department of La Paz; Minas de Oro, Department of Comayagua; Santa Rosa de Copán, Department of Copán; and Trojes, Department of El Paraíso.

Furthermore, the project received a 147.5 million lempiras contribution from Spain’s Debt Conversion Program to Honduras and a counterpart from the Ministry of Education, municipalities and beneficiary communities amounting to 17.6 million lempiras.

The financing was used to construct quality rural education infrastructure that covers the needs of basic education from pre-school to ninth grade, providing the appropriate means for effective training in a rural environment.

In total, four fully equipped educational centers were constructed with multi-purpose fields, science laboratories, workshops adapted to the area’s needs, agricultural training areas, administrative areas and a library.

In the framework of the event and as part of its social responsibility, “Nucleo España,” as representative of Spanish companies in Honduras, made delivery of musical instruments and sports equipment to the project’s beneficiary students in the community of Quezailica.

Participants in the event included representatives from the governments of Honduras and Spain, CABEI authorities, beneficiary communities, construction and supervising companies and the project’s direct beneficiaries.