Some 250 participants took part in the seventh annual Conference on Honduras, held in Copan between October 12th and October 15th. Church missions, medical groups, Rotary clubs, universities and various NGOs were all present at the conference, discussing ways of developing Honduras in the areas of education, health care and community building among others. During four day event, one speaker after the other presented his or her project and experiences in the country, highlighting their achievements and lessons learned, as well as the pitfalls they encountered along the way.

During lunch breaks and in the evenings, participants were seen networking on the square outside the conference center and in the local restaurants and bars, fulfilling one of the principal goals of the conference: providing an arena where contacts between the different organizations working with development in Honduras can be established.
"We are people that could potentially change Honduras over the next 20 or 30 years," said Marco Caceres, co-founder of projecthonduras.com and the organizer of the event.

Born in Tegucigalpa to Honduran parents but raised in Washington D.C., Caceres has a somewhat different approach to development, based on expertise and organizational skills rather than focusing exclusively on money. "People often don't understand the conference, it is too simple," he said. "When you start talking about human capital it sounds like a nice concept but people don't think you are going to change anything like that. But we are really not changing much with billions of dollars today because it is not going where it needs to go."

The Conference on Honduras can be described as the real life version of projecthonduras.com, an internet portal where some 5,500 people - mostly North Americans - exchange information and ask for help with specific problems that they have encountered when working in Honduras. "With contacts between people with different expertise we can accomplish a lot more a lot faster," according to Caceres.
On the question on what results have come out of the conference, Caceres points to the question and answer session held earlier in the day. A woman working for the medical clinic Operation Smile offered to train students from the biomedical program at UNITEC in the reparation of their specific equipment. Later, a man representing the Riecken Foundation promised a team operating in Puerto Lempira to fully equip the public library. "When people network here they don't tell me and later I hear that some great project has happened as a result of people meeting at the conference," Caceres said.

The members of projecthonduras.com are characterized by a spirit of camaraderie as well as the absence of politics and confrontation, according to Caceres, and he wants to pass on this spirit of working together to Honduran society. "In an underdeveloped country that participatory element is often lacking," he said, proposing an alliance between citizen groups like Rotary, Lions and projecthonduras.com and governments in developing countries. "The government does some things very good and other things very poorly and I think that sometimes the people rely on the government to do everything," he said.

One of the areas where Caceres believes that civil society could make a difference is in the improved access to safe drinking water, one of the major problems facing the poor of Honduras (see article on page 4). "Contaminated water is really as much of an epidemic worldwide as HIV/AIDS, just that you don't have the same economical interests," Caceres said. He has grand hopes for Honduras in this area. As Rotary International has decided to adopt clean water as its new focus area, Caceres proposes that the organization help solve the water problem in Honduras and so creates a model that can be applied to other countries. "Honduras is pretty manageable because there is relative stability and it is close to the support coming from the U.S. and there is obviously a great need," he said. He also dreams of getting Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey involved. "If I get one hour with Bill Gates I am sure I can convince him that this would be a great alternative model for development."
Before rushing back to the conference next door, where the Summit on Water is underway, Caceres repeats the projecthonduras.com mission. "We stay positive, we stay constructive.