University volunteers partner with community nonprofits to support families struggling during the holiday season.
Jorge Cardona | Staff Writer
For some families, Thanksgiving is uncertain – and FIU students and alumni diverted their holiday plans to respond to a growing need in their local communities.
The non-profit organization, Amor y Fuerza Honduras, teamed up with The School Pantry Coalition to set up a Thanksgiving food drive on Nov. 15 to distribute food to those who are having a difficult time making ends meet this holiday season.
The event brought together over a dozen young volunteers from Homestead Middle School and Homestead Senior High School, as well as FIU students, who gave their time to sort and pack non-perishable food donations from members of the community.
The food drive also included an icebreaker session that provided an opportunity for volunteers to get to know each other and for the younger volunteers to receive advice from older students, as they transition from school into college.
Photo by Jorge Cardona | PantherNOW
Amor y Fuerza Honduras was first set up by FIU alumna, Martha Hernandez, and her mother, Maritza Hernandez, in 2020 as a way of helping those affected by Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which struck Honduras in November of that year.
The Hernandez family, a Honduran immigrant family, first came to the U.S. in the late 1980s and has since built a life here through their family carpentry shop, a life they have dedicated to service and supporting those in need.
“We have always had a dream with my mom to be able to do our own non-profit to help and give back, mainly to Honduras, since it’s such a poor country and because we are originally from there”, said Martha.
Martha explained that their organization’s activities mainly provide aid for poor, rural communities in Honduras, helping them set up electricity and purchase school supplies and desks for the children, as well as running toy and food drives and shipping the donations to Honduras and other countries in Central America.
The operation receives support from the community in Doral and FIU through the university’s Honduras Club, which eagerly provides both donations and volunteers.
Diana leads volunteers in an icebreaker session | Photos by Jorge Cardona
Diana Hughes is a second-year accounting student at FIU and the founder of The School Pantry Coalition, which teamed up with Amor y Fuerza Honduras for this event and has done so in past projects.
The organization was first created by Hughes as a sophomore at Coral Reef Senior High School, where she created the first school pantry overseen by her organization in the wake of the pandemic in 2020, with the purpose of providing free access to food and other essential supplies for students in need through their school pantry.
In the years since its creation, The School Pantry Coalition has expanded to several more schools in Miami-Dade County, working with nine different schools in the area.
Hughes cites her background as a foster child as her motivation behind her work helping children in need, which she carries out with the help and support of her adoptive parents, who play an active role in the organization’s activities.
“I found that there were foster children in the school that didn’t have access to things or that their parents took advantage of the money…They had a lot of things that weren’t being given to them. Their backpacks were broken, and they were coming to school hungry.”
These two members of the FIU community have helped each other in their endeavor to serve their communities through collaboration in various events such as this. Hughes also cited Martha Hernandez as the person who helped her file her organization as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
This goes to show that, as Martha says, “The more we are, or the more that we become as a community, we can make a bigger impact”.
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