Honduras—Asegurando la Educación (Securing Education)

A major impediment to Honduran students’ success is violence in and around schools, which can lead to life-long negative behavior that impacts Honduran society and beyond. Preventing that violence is critical to enabling at-risk youth to stay in school, contributing to better academic outcomes, improved lives, reduced crime, and stronger communities.

The Asegurando la Educación (Securing Education) program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), helped schools establish cultures of nonviolence, inclusion, and respect. The project partnered with education systems and communities in target municipalities to make schools safer for students and teachers while also empowering schools to play a larger role in decreasing community violence.

Sample Activities

• Assist teachers and administrators to integrate locally tailored violence-prevention techniques into curriculum development, teacher training, and after-school activities.
• Provide grants and technical assistance to schools, community organizations, and social service partners to pilot customized prevention services.
• Support the strengthening of referral mechanisms and integration of social services for child protection cases related to drug abuse, psychological support, and domestic violence.
• Collaborate with the Ministry of Education to develop and implement protocols to help school staff address and mitigate violence.
• Train schools and education centers on applying screening models to identify high-risk youth for early intervention and additional support.

Select Results

• Launched the Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) to increase school enrollment and retention after COVID-19 crisis. To date, the project has trained 30,223 educators in 13,593 schools across the country in EWRS retention and enrollment activities.
• Helped 23 schools design and submit plans for reopening after COVID, enabling 10,999 students to return to the classroom, ultimately improving retention and decreasing the risk of irregular migration.
• Created and delivered Teacher Well-being sessions providing strategies to reduce stress and strengthen social-emotional skills. By promoting the sessions to benefit more than 11,136 educators, the team created healthier learning environments for nearly 800,000 students, ultimately curbing irregular migration.
• Launched the Educators for Peace e-Learning Training with a webinar that reached more than an estimated 464,800 people through television broadcasts and Facebook Live.
• Reached more than 558,287 individuals through the Curbing Migration communications campaign and hired and trained 159 new university fellows, who support retention activities for 102,316 students.
• Designed and implemented a sports-based, social-emotional learning program, training physical education teachers to deliver it in 88 schools. The project has trained 152 educators and 47 education authorities to conduct 25 sessions, which has benefitted 2,077 students.
• “Safe Learning Spaces” initiative in just one year increased the percentage of schools that retain full (initial to final) enrollment from 35 to 52 percent.
• Coordinated and linked government, civil society, and private sector actors with schools through the Social Asset Network. The network provides everything from social protection services, such as health care, substance abuse programs, emergency response, donations, to other goods and services that make schools safer. In the last fiscal year, nationwide network members provided $196,089.81 worth of donated materials and more than 3,950 hours of service by volunteering their time to support Asegurando’s activities.
• 87.5 percent of high-risk students completed the pilot cognitive behavioral therapy program, with teachers, parents, and the students themselves reporting improved behaviors and academic performance.
• Benefited approximately 2,266 students from 122 schools in eight cities with on-site and filmed guided visits of local businesses, helping vulnerable youth to envision their futures in Honduras.