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NPH USA President & CEO comments on the “migrant caravan”
NPH USA President and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Donaghue, comments on the “migrant caravan” from Central America.
October 25, 2018
NPH USA continues to watch, with profound concern, the current developments surrounding the “migrant caravan” of approximately 7,000 people traveling as a group from Central America to seek asylum in Mexico and the U.S. Half of these migrants are children and women and the majority is from Honduras. All of them have weighed the significant danger and uncertainty of leaving their homelands against the extreme crime, poverty, and gang violence threatening their lives if they stay. No one should have to live this way and unfortunately, there are no easy solutions.
Today, NPH USA strongly reaffirms our commitment to effecting positive and sustainable change in the nine Latin American and Caribbean countries we serve, including Honduras, so that families do not need to make impossible decisions about remaining or fleeing. Their lives and futures depend on it.
Founded in 1954, NPH is supporting more than 7,000 orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, and our NPH community outreach programs provided more than 140,000 services in 2017.
A primary example of how we put our values into practice to benefit the surrounding communities is our NPH Honduras transition home, Casa Mi Esperanza. In partnership with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the home focuses on short-term care, providing a loving place for children to transition out of danger, while professionals work to move the child into a long-term, stable, healthy home. Since it first opened its doors on July 18, 2017, about 75 children have received individualized care and about 60% of them have been reunified with their families through a reintegration program.
Our best hope for vulnerable children and their parents seeking pathways for a better future is to invest in their own countries and help create opportunities for stability, leadership and safe environments.
NPH’s philosophy has always been to work tirelessly to allow children to stay within their own countries by providing community and family strengthening programs, education, healthcare, and child protection in our residential homes, ensuring the children can make a difference as they become adults and be agents for positive change within their communities. Our efforts lessen the frequency of those families facing heartbreaking and dangerous circumstances so severe that they seek asylum elsewhere.
As NPH continues to embrace our mission more passionately than ever, we will use our voice and power to lift up the families and children who cannot speak for themselves. We ask our supporters to keep spreading the word about NPH USA’s critical work and uphold our mission financially, especially at this pivotal crossroads. Likewise, we ask our government to continue providing compassionate aid to those so much less fortunate than us and to work together to create a humane response for those simply seeking a safe future.
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