Youth Leadership

At the core of E2E’s education model is the belief that young people can be conduits for widespread community change. We believe in the power of every student enrolled in our schools to become the greatest weapon we can wield against poverty. Building local capital from within, E2E leverages every dollar spent on rural Honduran education to achieve maximum social impact.

I started the first girls club to combat adolescent pregnancy.
I used my talent to help the elderly overcome loneliness through art.
We doubled the number of girls enrolled in school.
I helped our community achieve near 100% access to clean water.
I led the community's first recycling campaign.
I started the first book club and led adult school.

The Teaching Methodology

As rural education specialists, we understand that the classroom exists within a complex ecosystem making the community itself a critical piece of a student’s potential success. We embed youth leadership in every aspect of our education programs. We accomplish this by treating the community as an extension of the classroom and encouraging students to apply what they have learned in their textbooks to the social impact projects they design. Our students use their local expertise as the foundation to understanding the most pressing needs in the community.

Students learn to adopt a new mindset when confronting challenges. Rather than viewing them as intractable and impossible, students become aware of the human capital that already exists within their communities and how to leverage local expertise to design low-cost interventions.

Students learn diagnostic tools to gather data such as community mapping, household surveys, and focus groups.

Students learn how to apply a SWOT analysis and develop SMART goals to organize their ideas and formulate a planof action.

Students gain the fundamentals of drafting a project budget and timeline. Using the data collected previously,students learn how to argue the need for the selected intervention and how to craft a full project proposal to apply for funding.
Students learn the importance of evaluating the project results against the established objectives. As a team, theycomplete group and self-evaluations to continue growing in their roles as leaders. They learn how to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative data

The Leadership Journey

All students enrolled in our schools begin receiving Leadership Courses in their first year. After Year 1, students are eligible to apply to our internship program that provides intensive training on community development. Students enter the program with the goal of reaching the highest leadership level of “Secoya”. Once accepted into the internship, all students begin as Bambu Leaders, working as local trainers in their communities. As they gain experience and move up each rank, they join an elite group of student leaders who travel across the country to train in other schools. For Roble Leaders and more advanced leaders, a stipend is provided for each workshop taught.

There are a series of requirements to be promoted to the next rank. This includes accumulating hours of workshops taught as trainers, written exams, and presenting in front of senior student leaders.