Our Story
Bringing Hope to Honduras
One Child at a Time
How It Started:
The Story of Anabel
In 2004, Ron Hicks was preparing for retirement when he set out on a motorcycle journey through Central America, from Brownsville, Texas through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. At a border checkpoint between El Salvador and Honduras, a nine-year-old girl approached him begging for spare change. He gave her a few coins, watched her immediately buy food from a street vendor, and moved on. But he was haunted by the memory.
A few months later, Ron returned to Honduras determined to find her. He returned to the
same border crossing and found the same girl begging there again. Her name was Anabel, pronounced “Annabelle,” and she was living with her family in a small shack in El Amatillo, Honduras.
Through a translator, Ron learned that the families of this rural town faced a daily impossible choice: send children to beg for food, or send them to school each day hungry with no way to feed them.
With a sense of optimism and the help of Messiah Lutheran Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Ron launched Lunches for Learning in 2004. The first school was Anabel’s school, Andrea Gonzales Elementary in El Amatillo. Within weeks, attendance grew from 84 students to over 100, and absenteeism dropped to essentially zero. Anabel completed her education and graduated. She is now an independent young woman living and working in neighboring El Salvador.
Children served a daily lunch
Schools across rural southern Honduras
Feeds a Child for the Entire School Year
Lunches Change Everything
A Choice No Child Should Face
In the US, more than 30 million children receive free lunch at school every day, while in Honduras, there is no guaranteed government-funded lunch program in public schools at all. Kids who wake up with no food in their homes are forced to choose between attending school on an empty stomach, or abandoning school to search for food in order to survive each day. Through L4L, Honduran kids receive lunch every school day – allowing them to learn their way to a better future.
Education as the Way Forward
A Honduran child who earns at least a sixth-grade education has a significantly better chance of living above poverty level as an adult, learning the basic reading, writing, and math skills that open future doors. By keeping children in school with a healthy lunch every school day, Lunches for Learning gives students the chance to complete their education and enter the workforce as literate individuals. What began with 84 students at one school has grown into a program that reaches over 2,000 children in 48 schools across the Valle District.
Our Mission
We provide nutritious daily school lunches that remove barriers to learning, helping children stay in school, complete their education, and build a pathway out of poverty
We Are Their Safety Net
While millions of children in the US receive free lunch at school every day as part of the broad US social safety net, Honduran children have no such program. Lunches for Learning provides the only safety net these Honduran children have, and it is making an enormous difference in their lives.
Full Community Involvement
Students must be in school to receive lunches. Parents commit to preparing and serving lunches each day. School Principals agree to secure food supplies, manage the parent cooking rotation, and provide detailed reports to L4L each week. This accountability maintains program efficiency.
A Long Term Solution
Empowering kids to learn their way to a better future is a long-term commitment. Abject poverty is not reversed with short-term efforts, but keeping kids in school through graduation provides them with lifelong opportunities that simply would not have existed otherwise.
A Continuing Legacy:
Lives Changed Forever
Fernando Estrada completed kindergarten through 6 th grade at the L4L-sponsored school closest to his home, which extends only through 6th grade. Not too much farther from his home, another L4L school offered 7th through 9th grades – and a continuation of the daily school lunches that had kept him in school. With a 9th grade education, after reaching age 18, Fernando was able to attend the police academy and then was sworn-in as a member of the Honduran National Police force.
Without Lunches for Learning, Fernando would have likely dropped out of school at a young age to search for food which means that the swearing-in ceremony pictured here would never have been possible without L4L.
Ana Cardenas graduated from 6th grade at an L4L-sponsored school in 2017, and she was determined to complete her education and pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. Coming from a family with no resources at all, Ana found a way to complete junior high and then high school in two not-so-nearby communities. It wasn’t easy, but she made it happen. After graduating from high school in 2024, she was able to return to her home community and become a volunteer kindergarten teacher in her own kindergarten, where she still teaches today.
Without Lunches for Learning, she likely would have had to drop out of school to search for food, and none of her accomplishments would have been possible. She achieved her dream of becoming a teacher, and L4L made it possible.