by José Chinchilla, Honduras National Director

En Español

I have learned that working for children requires compassion and love and knowledge, professionalism, and continuous training. Whether in foster families, homes, or orphanages, the children in our care need prepared people who can provide care that will help them redirect their journey to mental health and healthy relationships. I firmly believe that it is an injustice if we fail to train and prepare ourselves to give the children of Honduras the foundations they need to live in this broken world and build resilience as they face the challenges ahead of them.

It is no coincidence that God's people had to be constantly taught in the Word and its teachings. God's Word and law had to be taught when people awoke and when they went to sleep; it was to be passed down from generation to generation. We can observe that God teaches us a very clear principle when reading these practices. God's people must constantly be learning in this world, not only from his Word but also from God's science that helps us understand the behavior of the mind and the brain. For this reason, one of the values of Family Life Mission is continuous training. We must train ourselves to transmit knowledge to other people, organizations, governments, and civil society.

We are very grateful to God to have the opportunity to host the first Latin American Conference on Vulnerable Children at the end of March.

As I said earlier, we must be trained and taught to be empowered and prepared to care for the children of Honduras who come from difficult backgrounds where their development has been interrupted by trauma such as abuse, abandonment, and neglect. We are convinced that people with wisdom are empowered people. We appreciate the partnership with Lightshine to help us with this conference and share with others the knowledge and experience we have had with the work of vulnerable children. Every child in Honduras deserves, needs, and screams for people who can meet their needs and who do not give up helping them so that trauma does not have the last word.

The conference aims to learn about the complex traumatic experiences in children and what the impact is on brain development and attachment. We will have the opportunity to establish a dialogue to learn about therapeutic strategies and intervention and policy decisions that can favor the development of resilience, facilitate the recovery process, and prevent re-traumatization. And finally, organizations can promote skills development, mutual support, and collaboration between families, caregivers, leaders, and workers involved in the upbringing and education of vulnerable children. All these objectives are intended to create a space for reflection and decision-making for best practices towards vulnerable children in the minds of directors, technical staff, and educators.

Seeing the importance, magnitude, and need required to care for vulnerable children due to factors that have disrupted their healthy development, Family Life Missions envisions the need to train all sectors working with children.

We are grateful to God for giving us this opportunity to organize this conference, to provide knowledge and tools that can be useful in their approaches with children. We invite you to join us in prayer so that this time of learning will be of significant impact and bear much fruit.