The fish of Vega Redonda

High up in the mountains of Western Honduras is the small village of Vega Redonda. Most of the 500 people who live there depend on the small coffee farms that employ them for three months of the year. For the rest of the year, they have little opportunity for work, little income, and little money for buying daily necessities. Being born in Vega Redonda, here, Madrid recalls on how she and her husband created the "Light of Esperanza" ("Light of Hope") projects, beginning with a village party. At this party the family discussed with the village adults how they might develop projects that would help the women earn money when they were not working on the coffee farm. For the first project, the people decided to choose five women who would be responsible for raising 4,000 Tilapia fish hatchlings and then, once grown, selling the fish to neighboring villages. With more donations, other women in the village hope to purchase chickens to raise, and to buy seeds to plant vegetables that they would sell to other villages.