By replacing slow growing primary forest hardwoods with faster growing woods from the secondary forest, pressure can be reduced on Honduras' fine woods like laurel and mahogany. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

By WENDY GRIFFIN

TEGUCIGALPA -- The National Professional Training Institute (INFOP) is the not the favorite topic of businessmen. Companies with over five employees have to pay a percentage of their payroll to support classes given by this state-run training program.

INFOP offers several different kinds of training. In Tegucigalpa's Colonia Miraflores and in San Pedro, it offers courses in electronics, refrigeration, soldering, and mechanics. There are seven centers around the country that offer training for carpenters, masons, metalsmiths, and seamstresses, including Trujillo, La Ceiba, and San Lorenzo.

However, INFOP also offers a special training program in rural areas like Erandique, Lempira, La Esperanza, Intibuca; Jacaleapa, El Paraiso; Colonia Agricola outside of Catacamas, Olancho, and El Carbon, Olancho. The latter offers programs to Indians and Ladinos who will probably never work for another company.

These special rural training programs are available to students of both sexes who have finished sixth grade, are between 13 and 22, and single. There is no cost, although the students have to bring beans or other food from home, since they live at the school. There are also no admission exams.

Classes last two years with the students at school for one week and practice at home for two weeks. These social programs of INFOP are a contribution of private businesses to the development of poor Hondurans who otherwise would have had no chance to continue their studies.

At the school in El Carbon, which has both Pech and Ladino students, male students study carpentry/furniture making in addition to agriculture. Female students study home economics and sewing. All students study an administration course that includes how to run a small business, mathematics, how to determine costs, how to promote their products and introduction to the market.

Students are also required to participate in classes on social formation or "life-skills." This program includes how to set personal goals, sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, how to avoid drugs and alcohol, and how to get along with others. UNITEC, a private university in Tegucigalpa, sells video cassettes to assist this portion of the program. In El Carbon, a generator is used to permit the use of these audio-visual materials.

The furniture making project at El Carbon is a collaboration of INFOP, the U.S. Peace Corps, and a U.S. organization called Greenwood. INFOP instructor Oscar Cervando Mendez Lopez teaches the students how to make dining room chairs, benches, and Windsor chairs. The Peace Corps and Greenwood provide additional help in marketing and sale of the chairs.

Usually, fine quality chairs in Honduras are made of colored hardwoods such as laurel and mahogany that are slow growing and come from Honduras' increasingly scarce uncut primary forests. The beautiful Windsor chairs of this program are made of cola de pava, yema de huevo and mangelete -- woods that are usually used for firewood. They grow in the secondary forest and Fundacion Vida supports a reforestation project for these non-traditional woods. By expanding the number of different woods that can be used, pressure on scarcer hardwoods is reduced.

These woods can be certified as non-destructive to the tropical rain forest. By teaching students the whole cycle of reforestation and furniture making, Mario Rene Zuniga hopes that the program will give a new perspective of the forest to people who have traditionally just cut down or set fire to the forest so they can replace it with pasture land for cattle.

Because this program is in a rural area with no electricity, all the wood working is done with hand tools. Students learn to bend the wood using a steamer and molds, and to make joints without glue. The quality still needs to be improved somewhat before they are of export quality, but that is the goal.

Thirty students have already graduated and some have their own workshops, including Taller Jose Pablo in El Campo, close to the El Carbon INFOP school and Rigoberto Escobar of Silin, just outside of Trujillo where people can order and purchase these chairs. Those of Silin are made with wood through a management plan for non-traditional woods.

The director of the school feels the program is a success. Students who graduate already have more income. They can take advantage of renewable resources that they have in the community to improve the economic situation of their families and learn to protect the forest. There is no need for these students to immigrate to the United States or to the cities. In the past, these students would have had no chance to study and now they can.

For more information on the Greenwood Project, contact Scott Landis, Greenwood, 80 Academy St. South Berwick, ME 03908; Fax 207-384-0063; e-mail: scott@ttic.net. People can visit the El Carbon school while staying at the houses of the Pech Eco-Tourism Project, which also offers walks to a waterfall, excellent birding, and medicinal plant tours. Buses are available to El Carbon from La Ceiba, Tocoa, Juticalpa, Trujillo and Tegucigalpa.