Monthly Archives: May 2020

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This is an article published in a small local newspaper on April 29, 2020 by Reid Fitzsimons with the intent of suggesting people who could afford it to donate their virus relief money to charity. It was run unedited except for the headline- the original title was "Retired Pennsylvania Couple Donates Virus Relief Money To Orphanage"

In 2007 Patricia Huenemoerder and her husband, Reid Fitzsimons, of Thompson, PA, opened a small charity project in a rural village in Honduras, which they described as a center for children with a mix of nutritional, recreational and educational programs; overall a safe place where kids were free to act like kids. A variety of reasons, including increasing violence in Honduras and Fitzsimons' son being deployed to Afghanistan, led to the closing of the children's program in 2012, but in 2013 they began a less involved program focusing on vocational training for young adults and small community development projects. It was for this reason Fitzsimons went to Honduras on the 12th of March, just days before the global corona virus restrictions were put in place.

Carpentry class with the 2 oldest kids 2019

"I was able to get everything up and running pretty fast; the carpentry shop, English classes, the sewing co-op" he mentioned, "but soon thereafter Honduras essentially shut down, leaving people largely confined to their villages and being jailed simply for being found outside." He eventually was no longer able to accomplish anything and finally, heeding dire US Embassy warnings returned on an emergency evacuation flight on April 6th.