When a destitute mother is forced to raise her children on her own, her extreme poverty becomes a story of daily survival. Heidi is a 19-year-old single mother trying to raise her two young children in Honduras. Without any job skills, she is unable to earn enough money washing her neighbors’ clothes to feed her daughter and son and keep them safe.

On International Women’s Day, which was March 8, generous donors blessed Heidi and other poor women in Honduras by providing a new vocational center through Food For The Poor. Women will receive essential training and will be eligible for a job in a local textile factory.

Up to 200 women a year will be trained at the Ciudad Mujer Sewing Center/Trade School in Choloma, the first of three training centers planned in Honduras.

The center will be part of a larger complex where women can receive education, medical care and assistance in cases of violence and physical abuse.  Here, women will devote two and a half months to learn basic sewing, how to operate machines and basic supervision in a factory setting.

Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor primarily in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. For information, visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.