Community Development
Promoting Positive Change
Building Stronger Communities for the Long Term CAMO believes that holistic care includes living in a healthy community. Since 1993, CAMO has worked alongside Honduran leaders and community partners to identify critical gaps and build practical solutions that improve health, safety, education, and opportunity. These efforts have helped create and strengthen public healthcare facilities, a community center and gym, trade school, cultural center, daycare, and domestic violence shelter. What makes these projects especially meaningful is their staying power. Community initiatives begun by CAMO decades ago continue serving people today, with local leadership, partnerships, and ongoing support helping them grow and respond to changing needs. What we have provided is a foundation where people safely live and thrive.
CAMO at a Glance
2024-2025
Total Patients Served
Boxes of Medical Supplies Donated
Pieces of Medical Equipment Donated
Volunteers in Honduras and United States
Total Students Educated
Public Health Center
From an Unsafe Facility to a Center of Care When CAMO became involved, one of the busiest public health centers in Honduras was itself a health risk. Big slabs of concrete continually fell on the 11 small treatment areas. With no running water and no sewage system, the excrements of the day ran onto the ground and into the center of the city, regularly putting up to 300 patients, 56 employees and the community at risk. CAMO responded with a demolition and rebuild of the health center and completed in 2014, creating a modern public healthcare facility designed around the needs of patients and healthcare professionals. Today, to date it is the second largest, most modern public health center in Honduras. The CAMO- designed and built health center houses 22 specialized clinics and serves approximately 500 to 700 patients each day. CAMO continues to strengthen the facility through maintenance, equipment, supplies, professional training, and houses for of CAMO,s specialty services programs for women’s health, demonstrating that completing a building is only the beginning of sustainable healthcare development.
IMPACT
A once-failing facility now provides thousands of people with access to dignified, dependable healthcare—and continues serving the community more than a decade after its transformation
Hospital Support
Strengthening the Hospital Where CAMO’s Story Began
CAMO’s relationship with Hospital de Occidente began in 1993, when the hospital lacked many of the basic systems needed to provide safe, modern care. Rather than addressing isolated problems, CAMO committed to strengthening the hospital’s infrastructure over the long term.
Over the years, CAMO has designed and constructed approximately $3.8 million in hospital infrastructure, including the kitchen, laundry, biomedical department, pediatric areas, endoscopy, emergency room and trauma room, additions to labor and delivery, and the NICU. CAMO also introduced critical systems that had never before existed at the hospital, including emergency generators, medical compressed air, and internal communication systems. These investments created the physical foundation needed for safer surgery, emergency care, maternal and newborn services, diagnostics, and day-to-day hospital operations.
That commitment continues today through medical equipment, supplies, biomedical maintenance, infrastructure improvements, and professional education. Recent support has further strengthened emergency and critical care through equipment and hands-on training in triage, trauma management, and emergency ultrasound.
IMPACT
For more than three decades, CAMO has helped transform essential hospital infrastructure from the ground up—building systems and spaces that continue serving patients across western Honduras every day.
Cultural Center
Honduran schools are not privileged to have gifted and talented programs, and not all children enjoy sports. All gifted and artistically minded children need an area to express themselves. In 2007 the Historical Commission in Santa Rosa de Copán requested funding and building assistance from CAMO to create and manage a cultural center facility from an abandoned antique water cistern. Today, the cultural center in Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras allows children to experience enrichment and educational development in their areas of gifts and talents.
Programming at the cultural center includes:
- Gymnastics | Music | Art (Various styles) | Dancing (Various styles) | Theater
IMPACT
Music is therapy to many. Each year at least 300 children are practicing to master the art of music and theater.
Community Gym
In most USA cities, children have the space and opportunity to be active outside of school hours. But in Western Honduras, even with a population of 1 million people, there was nowhere for children to play when it was raining. No churches, no schools, no gyms, no community centers, nothing. What do children do when there is nowhere to go and nothing to do? Without any available healthy environment, children are in danger of falling into violence and crime. The purpose of building the community gym was to help to keep children off the street.
CAMO has been a constant member of the governing body over this gym and community center, bringing it up from an abandoned empty shell and transforming it into an active facility. Today, local Honduran schools, churches and government agencies utilize this community gym. Scheduled time slots organize the gym’s variety of daily activities, which include:
Volleyball
Soccer
Table tennis
Basketball
Karate
Aerobics
Chess Club
Wheelchair basketball
Today, the center welcomes more than 600 children, youth, and family members each day. Activities encourage physical health, teamwork, discipline, core values and community connection. CAMO continues investing in the facility through sports equipment, volunteer instruction, special programs, and improvements that keep the center active and relevant to the community.
IMPACT
What began as an empty building is now a thriving community hub where hundreds of people each day have a safe place to exercise, connect, learn teamwork, and belong.
Daycare Center
Most developing countries do not have Head Start programs or preschools. In fact, it is not uncommon to see very young children wandering the streets while their parents work to earn a living. Toddlers can be seen hanging on the skirts of their mothers who are vendors. The daycare in Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras specifically targets the low-economic class to keep children off the street and break this cycle of poverty.
The daycare provides:
- 3 balanced meals | Full time teacher (CAMO Staff) | Multi-vitamins | Medical care | Clothing | School supplies | Sleeping room | Cafeteria | Nap room | Classrooms
Children between the ages of 6 months to 6 years old are placed in age-appropriate structured learning environments within a 1-room class setting. A certified teacher is provided by CAMO for Kindergarten for children between the ages of 4-6. This licensed kindergarten prepares children to be ready for 1st grade. The Ministry of Education in Honduras has noted that these children are among the highest-performing and best-disciplined children coming into the 1st grade.
IMPACT
70 children benefiting from education, nutrition and a safe place taking them off the streets and giving them a head start.
Domestic Violence Shelter
A Place of Safety. A Path Toward Independence.
For women and children escaping violence, having nowhere safe to go can mean returning to the very situation they are trying to survive. Casa Hogar provides a confidential place of protection, recovery, and hope.
CAMO helped educate the community about domestic violence, designed the facility, secured funding, managed construction, and worked with local partners to develop the programs needed inside. Casa Hogar opened in April 2010, with CAMO USA providing approximately 95% of the original construction funding.
Today, women and children receive 24-hour protection, housing, food, healthcare, psychological support, education, and assistance as they rebuild their lives. The program also promotes greater independence through life skills and economic-development opportunities.
During the most recently reported fiscal year, 155 women, girls, and children received protection and recovery services through the shelter. More than 15 years after opening, Casa Hogar continues to provide a safe path forward for families escaping violence.
IMPACT
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Let’s Impact the world together
Every act of generosity helps us save lives. Whether you choose to make a financial donation, sponsor a specific service, volunteer your time, or donate medical equipment, you play a vital role in bringing hope and sustainable healing to communities in Central America.