Maggie Ducayet’s knack for relationship building helped forge her nonprofit, Summit in Honduras, into what it is today — an organization that benefits Honduran children and families and provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for Summit County locals. 

She said making the move from Houston to the Colorado Rockies a couple decades ago had her feeling lost. She found herself wondering what she was going to do with this next stage of life. A friend from Houston invited Ducayet on a trip to Honduras with her church, and she took the invitation. 

Ducayet said the trip was wonderful in many ways, but at the same time was not so wonderful in others. She felt people on the trip were projecting what type of help Hondurans needed as opposed to asking them what they actually needed. So, she did some research and made another trip to Honduras to figure out what type of help would be useful. By listening to Hondurans, she’s helped fill gaps of need in the medical realm, the education realm and more in the over 20 years since she created Summit in Honduras.

A partnership formed in the last several years brought the opportunity for Summit High School students taking Spanish classes to practice the language in a real-world setting while helping Summit in Honduras carry out its mission to serve impoverished families. 

During a June trip to Honduras, local high schoolers got to put their Spanish skills to the test while working on projects to help provide relief for one of the nation’s most glaring problems: a rise in asthma case rates. 

‘Si se puede”

Summit High School students in teacher Susan Mocatta’s Spanish class said their trip to Honduras entailed a whole lot of navigating a new language — and mixing cement. 

One of the first projects Ducayet had the students help with is building stoves. Why stoves? Because they are among the chief solutions to the nation’s pulmonary issues. 

Ducayet said a local medical clinic her nonprofit is tied to came to her five years ago to report a rising problem — Hondurans, particularly children, were continuing to be diagnosed with asthma. She said this came as a surprise at first, as she felt like the air in Honduras was some of the cleanest she’s come across. 

It turned out the pulmonary issues were a result of how the stoves in nearly every Honduran household has been built for the last several decades. The stoves lacked vents, meaning everytime someone cooked in a home everyone in it was breathing in smoke. 

To help quell the issue, Summit in Honduras began building eco stoves, energy-efficient stoves that need a fraction of the wood to cook and have built-in vents so smoke doesn’t linger in homes. 

Mocatta said her students picked up stove-building skills quickly, but the labor wasn’t easy. She said a tenet of her Spanish classes is the “si se puede” mindset, or the “yes, we can” mindset, and students really tapped into that during the trip.

High school student Jesse Busnardo said it was fulfilling to see how grateful people were they were doing this work. He said in the house he helped build a stove in, the owner was very inviting and was big on ensuring everyone stayed hydrated.

Due to locals beginning to build their own stoves, the Summit in Honduras group then shifted gears to a library installation and a literary skills education project.

Mountain town kids meeting mountain town kids from a world away 

Incoming senior at Summit High School Anna Shingles has been taking Spanish classes since kindergarten and was placed in one of the most competitive Spanish classes her junior year. Over a decade into learning the language, she was ready for an opportunity to use the language in a functional way outside the classroom. When her teacher, Mocatta, presented the opportunity to go on a Summit in Honduras trip, she immediately threw her name in the hat. 

Mocatta’s students said being in Honduras put them in a situation where communicating in Spanish was necessary, and it made them stronger Spanish speakers. Students said one of the groups that helped them expand their understanding of the language the most was little kids.

Busnardo said his fellow classmates could tell when something they said didn’t make sense because the young children they were speaking to would tilt their heads, smile and not respond. He said this put them in a position to work through the situation to try and find the right words for what they trying to say.

StudentGrace Gardner said, maybe without even knowing it, the little kids they interacted with helped create the perfect learning environment sans judgement. She said their patience and willingness to help her and her classmates communicate in Spanish made a huge difference.

“The most improvement I saw was when I was able to speak with kids and make them laugh, and have them understand me,” she said. “I think that was such a cool thing to be able to do, and I’m really glad that I had enough Spanish experience to be able to have really cute conversations with them.”

Shingles said the Summit High School students ended up leaving the trip with a long list of new words in the notes app on their phones.

Students also got to forge friendships with students their own age in the villages they visited, primarily through pick-up soccer games. Mocatta arranged an exchange with one of the local schools so Honduran students can come experience Summit County next school year.

Mocatta’s students said they would recommend a trip with Summit in Honduras to anyone. They said Ducayet and her husband Wally, the treasurer of the organization, have a way about them that makes people feel at home immediately.

To learn more about Summit in Honduras, visit SummitInHonduras.org.