Behind a high wall on the outskirts of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, is a three-story building. On this location, the fight for a more fair Honduran society takes place. This is the headquarters of ASJ, and I meet Claudia Menza here on a hot day. She is a journalist working on ASJ’s website, revistazo.com.
Advocacy and information
ASJ is short for Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa – Association for a more just society. ASJ is a Christian organisation working with advocacy and information to vulnerable population groups about their rights.
Especially the poorest people in Honduras, women and people without education are unaware of their rights and, thus, risk getting caught in the Honduran legal system. Or they do not have the basic knowledge on how to demand their rights in relation to e.g. their rights as employees or their basic human rights.
Revistazo.com
Every month, 160,000 Honduran people visit the website revistazo.com. This is a high number considering the fact that Honduras is a country with a high percentage of poor people who do not own a computer or have internet access in their home.
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Claudia Mendoza was hired in 2004 as a part time journalist to write articles for ASJ’s website, revistazo.com. Today, she works full time, and two more journalists and a webmaster have been hired. In addition, some external journalists write articles for the website, and seven different people write columns for the site.
The seven columnists represent all sides of Honduran politics. “This is a place where opinions are expressed”, says Claudia. “And we cannot decide what people should think”.
On the webpage you can read stories about human rights, working conditions, laws on transparency and about Hondurans who fight the system.
A law on transparency
In 2006, a new law on transparency was passed in Honduras. This law means that everyone can gain access to view the expenses and incomes of locally elected politicians, and this contributes hugely to the fight against the extensive corruption that dominates Honduran politics.
However, it can be a struggle to make the politicians hand in their accounts – and this is one of the problems that ASJ attacks. The organization contacts all politicians directly and requests a list of expenses and incomes and then reviews this information thoroughly.
”We encounter many strange posts on these lists”, explains Claudia: ”For instance, one politician had given 1,000 dollars to an organization, but when I tried to locate the organization to check on this, it turned out that no such organization existed.”
In cases like this one, ASJ takes this information further in the legal system or feed the story to the press.
In addition, all information from the politicians is posted on revistazo.com so that the entire population in Honduras can access it at any time and see how their politicians spend their budgets.
The future
In order to follow the progress, ASJ and Revistazo.com has, of course, a Facebook profile. And they have seminars for local journalists and teach about nuanced and in-depth journalism.
All employees at revistazo.com work hard to expand the website and add more information for the Honduran people to read.
”We are free to write what we want on this website, and this is how it will also be in the future. Therefore, we do not want to depend on income from commercial companies who have opinions on what we write. This is why it is necessary for us to receive funding from organisations like DanChurchAid and countries like Denmark”, Claudia explains. “So, please, keep sending money”, she adds with a crooked smile.