About Us
Tierra Santa Support Inc. (TSSI) is dedicated to providing support to the Tierra Santa Home for Abandoned Children in Villa San Antonio, Honduras. TSSI provides support through monthly monetary support, guidance as part of the management structure for Tierra Santa, and through direct mission work at Tierra Santa.The Tierra Santa Home for Abandoned Children provides shelter, subsistence, education and some vocational training for destitute and other unfortunate children in Honduras, Central America. The Home is located in Villa de San Antonio, a town about 60 miles northwest of the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa.
The Hogar Tierra Santa was officially opened in 1986 by its founder and current Director, Sr. Santiago Martinez. During his time as a social worker in a boys’ home, Sr. Martinez became aware of the dire need for similar institutions for young girls and started the Home in response to that need. Originally, the Home was established simply to offer food and shelter to children, but over time it has grown to include new infrastructure and innovative vocational training and agricultural programs.The children come to the Home through the social services or the family courts, while others are brought by their parents. Some of these children are orphans, some are abandoned, some are abused, and some are from families too poor to look after them.
The Hogar Tierra Santa is home at any one time to between 120 and 140 children, the majority of them girls. The education program in place in the Hogar’s school includes:
i) Pre-kindergarten
ii) Kindergarten
iii) six classes of primary level instruction.
The school also educates children from the town, with some of the teachers paid by the government and some by the Home. The children of the Home get secondary level education in government schools in the local towns. In addition to basic schooling, Tierra Santa offers children rudimentary classes in sewing, baking, and English. The Home also runs a program called “Happy Faces” for nutritionally deficient children from the village.