Overview
|
||
The Church and Community Alliance Division will seek, develop, and strengthen partnerships with local churches and community organizations to meet the needs of vulnerable children and families in their respective communities.
| Ivonne de Torres, IHNFA Secretary General; Suyapa Nunez, IHNFA Director; Terry Mallasch, Arrow Director of International Missions; Carol Mallasch, Arrow Mission Support Specialist - during the signing of the agreement. | Scott Kidd, Arrow Sr VP of Church & Community Alliances; Clay Barton, Arrow National Director of Ministry Relations; Ileana Molina, Arrow Government Liaison; Terry Mallasch, Arrow Director of International Missions; Ivonne de Torres, IHNFA Secretary General; Mark Tennant, Arrow Founder/CEO - during a recent visit to Arrow's national headquarters. |
Honduran Government signs agreement with Arrow to begin significant changes towards improving life for children in care
On August 25th, the Director of the Honduran Institute for Children and Families (IHNFA), Suyapa Nunez, signed an agreement with Terry Mallasch, Arrow’s Director of International Missions, which establishes Arrow as an official representative of the Honduran government to begin developing a national Child Registry, and which declares Arrow’s Ambassador Family Initiative (AFI) training as the official required training for all child serving agencies operating in Honduras.
The child tracking system currently used by IHNFA is severely antiquated. Physical paper stored in file folders is still the method used by IHNFA to track children in the government’s care. The inability to search, retrieve and update records in a timely fashion has meant many children literally get lost in the system. After moves to different facilities, the recorded location of individual children becomes out dated and even locating them becomes impossible. With the current method, this is no way to accurately determine how many children are in the government’s care, where they are, what type of care or treatment is needed for each child or which children are available for adoption. Arrow’s task will be to begin collecting current data and develop a computerized tracking system that will give instant access to current information on each child in care.
Staff members of orphanages, children’s centers, and child serving organizations have not had access to formalized training. This has resulted in the majority of child welfare workers being ill-prepared to help children suffering from sexual and other types of abuse. Arrow’s, now required, AFI training is the same biblically based training that all Arrow foster families in the US receive, but it has been adapted for cultural differences in Honduras. AFI is a 24-hour, eight part course that prepares foster parents and now child welfare workers in Honduras to effectively minister to abused children.
Edwin Mejia, Arrow’s trainer in Honduras, has already presented the AFI training to 682 staff members in 43 child serving ministries and organizations that together serve approximately 13,640 children. These trainings have been, and will continue to be, at no cost to the organizations receiving the training.
After signing the agreement, the secretary General of INFHA, Ivonne de Torres, visited Arrow’s national headquarters in Spring, Texas to become better acquainted with Arrow and to see first-hand a demonstration of the data-base system that will be implemented in Honduras.
It is exciting to see the systemic impact Arrow is having in Honduras, which will result in not only bringing hope to thousands of children now but for many generations of children in the future.
