A teacher in your home Single mums get educated through the radio

Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Kathia Varela gently adjusts the dial of her old stereo to tune into her 5pm radio class on the Catholic radio station La Voz de Suyapa (The Voice of Suyapa), broadcast at 910 AM frequency. Next to her is a Spanish textbook on a small table. Over the airwaves, one hears the modulated sounds of an exchange of voices between a man and a woman, who then pause and introduce the show: El InstitutoHondureño de Educaciónpor Radio (IHER, the Honduran Institute of Education by Radio) presents its programmeEl Maestro en Casa (Teacher at Home). The lesson begins for this 18 year-old young woman who, along with other 50,000 Hondurans who are mostly single mothers, places her hope of improving her circumstances on this alternative educational model.

"El Maestro en Casa", which has enabled more than 500 000 people to graduate, combines the use of textbooks, a daily hour-long programme aired on radio stations throughout the country, and face-to-face tutorials once a week. Implemented by IHER since 1989, it provides elementary and high school classes to students for a modest monthly payment of 100 lempiras (US$ 4.5).
According to Sister Marta Soto, founder and dean, the programme has taught more than half a million citizens to read and write. "When you give the people the opportunity to get an education, there is a change in them and the light of hope appears, because only an educated nation is a free nation", she said.

Kathia, who is following the eighth grade programme and who lives in a house made of sun-dried bricks and metal sheets in a village 25 minutes away from the Honduran capital city, follows the class broadcast. "It's a hard work because I have to take care of and clean a house Monday through Friday," she states. 

Most of the IHER's students work, and are aged between 14 and 60 years. Almost 70 percent of them are women.

dennis.dominguez@elheraldo.hn