From Hardship to Helping Hands
Shin Fujiyama overcomes obstacles to launch a non-profit in Honduras.
This article was published in Abroad View's fall 2009 magazine.
By Asha Toulmin
If you tried to guess the place that comes closest to the heart of Shin Fujiyama, you probably couldn’t do it by looking at his college transcript or resume.
It isn’t Japan, Spain, or Portugal—although he speaks Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese fluently. It isn’t the University of Mary Washington, where he played for the soccer team and won first place in the boxing club lightweight division. For Fujiyama, it’s progress that comes first—literally.
El Progreso is a city in northwestern Honduras where Fujiyama travelled in the summer of 2005 with the University of Mary Washington group Campus Christian Community. The problems he encountered in El Progreso left such an impression on Fujiyama that, after the trip, he enrolled in a nonprofit economics class, where he connected with Doris Buffett, founder of the Sunshine Lady Foundation. In February 2006, with these resources, Fujiyama and his sister, Cosmo Fujiyama, created their own nonprofit organization—Students Helping Honduras (SHH).
“It was a neat experience when I took the first group of students down with me to Honduras, and I didn’t have much of a clue on what I was doing. We had an unforgettable time together though,” Fujiyama says. “Soon after, several thousand people showed up to our first major fundraising event, the SHH Walk-A-Thon, and we have been growing ever since.”
Fujiyama completed his degree in international affairs, and he added a second pre-med major after witnessing devastating health problems in Honduras. The organization uses grants, donations, and events like its annual Walk-A-Thon, to raise money and develop projects that benefit the El Progreso area, particularly the children of the city’s Copprome Orphanage. “Being with the kids is definitely the best part of the job,” Fujiyama says. “They are like regular kids. Sometimes they’re great, and other times they are troublemakers, just like all of us when we were younger. It’s easy to forget the conditions they come from because they seem so happy when they’re playing.”
Three months after Fujiyama founded SHH, students from University of Mary Washington and College of William and Mary (Shin and Cosmo’s respective schools) have raised more than $100,000. The money went toward a new education center with a library, study room, computer lab, art room, wireless Internet, and kindergarten in El Progreso’s Copprome Orphanage. Since then, more than 500 students have traveled to Honduras through SHH. The group also raised a scholarship fund with money that goes to running a small girls’ home that helps young women in Honduras go to college. Currently, they are building an eco-village to help families and children raise themselves out of poverty.
Just getting through midterm exams is enough of a challenge for many college students, let alone starting a nonprofit organization. But Fujiyama has faced his own setbacks in life, which he says prepared him to overcome barriers and meet bigger challenges. When he was two years old, he developed a severe skin condition called eczema, and at age four he was diagnosed with a rare heart condition caused by a hole in the wall between his left and right ventricles. The doctors told Fujiyama he would never be able to play sports. He went on to become captain of his high school varsity soccer team and president of University of Mary Washington’s club soccer team.
Fujiyama then took his organizational skills beyond sports and into the nonprofit world with SHH. Yet, organizational challenges still exist. “When I first started organizing on campus, I worked hard to get the word out about the kids of Honduras,” he says, explaining that he made phone calls, wrote e-mails, and posted fliers—and when he later found them in trash cans, he would fish them out and put them back on bulletin boards. At first, no one showed up to meetings. “But little by little, a few students began to show interest,” he says, “and I saved up some money washing dishes at the school cafeteria to fund our trips.
“No book or class can prepare you enough on how to adapt and make on-the-spot decisions to survive and continue to grow in the competitive nonprofit world. You learn through the process and from your mistakes. That’s the only way,” Fujiyama says.
SHH now offers students several opportunities to go to Honduras on service trips and to apply for summer fellowships, which reinforce its motto: “Where students create change.”
“College students are innately motivated. Most don’t get involved in service work because organizations don’t give them enough of a challenge or enough responsibility,” Fujiyama says. “Providing training, offering volunteer opportunities in Honduras, and providing structure to help them organize back home unleashes their potential.”
Fujiyama started SHH just three years ago, but its growth illustrates the power that college students have in international development. SHH has been featured in several media outlets, including PerezHilton.com, and its work has been recognized by the president of the Honduran congress and the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. Most recently, Fujiyama became a “CNN Hero,” an ordinary person who makes a big difference in the lives of others. He is the network’s first “Young Wonder” hero for 2009—age 25 or younger and chosen from among nominees across the globe.
“I do it for all of the student volunteers who believe in the cause and are putting up flyers and fundraising as we speak,” Fujiyama says. “I owe it all to them. They are the organization.”