The IPA partnership: eleven Rotary clubs and a counterpart in Copán Ruinas

In 2011, a Rotarian from Washington State named Peter Martin came to see the ruins of Copán. Two things happened that weren’t on the itinerary: a boy from a community told him what his community needed, and a local shopkeeper — a member of the Rotary Club of Copán Ruinas — told him that if he was really interested, he should get involved.

He did. In the spring of 2014, the International Project Alliance (IPA) was formally established — a U.S.-based nonprofit headquartered in northwest Washington State, whose counterpart in Honduras is the Club Rotario de Copán Ruinas.

What exactly is the IPA

It’s not an organization that works alone: it’s a coalition of more than eleven Rotary clubs from District 5050 (the Pacific Northwest of the United States and southwest British Columbia) that decided to focus their international effort on a single region of the world rather than spread it thin.

Among them are the Fidalgo Island Rotary Club of Anacortes — where the idea was born — La Conner, Semiahmoo, the Pacific Northwest Passport Rotary Club, the Rotary Foundation of the San Juan Islands, and clubs from Stanwood, Mount Vernon, and Oak Harbor.

On the foundation side, the work is carried out by volunteers: Peter Martin as president, Walt Guterbock — a veterinarian and former Peace Corps volunteer — in operations, and Marty Pease in communications. The volunteers cover administrative costs out of their own pockets, so donations go directly to project expenses.

On the Honduran side, the counterpart is the club. That word — counterpart — means something very concrete: identifying the need, negotiating with the community, accompanying the execution, and taking responsibility afterward. Without that, a bank transfer from Washington doesn’t become a school.

Where it works

In 38 communities of Copán in and around the municipality of Copán Ruinas. These are the communities where getting there takes hours and where water, a school, and a health post are never guaranteed.

The work is organized into six interconnected fronts: education; health; food and agriculture; water and sanitation; construction; and economic development — the last one through microloans for entrepreneurs.

What it’s done in education

This is the front with the most striking numbers, according to the foundation’s and District 5050’s own reports:

• Adopt a School: about 30 primary schools supported, serving more than 2,680 students, from preschool through university.
• Adopt a Dream: university scholarships for more than 20 students.
• Secondary education: in February 2023, the fifteenth new school opened in communities of Copán in the area, and the program supports about 520 secondary students.
• Mobile library, school libraries, and a technology fund.

Behind every new school is a fact that explains its importance: before it existed, finishing sixth grade was, for most of those communities, the end of the road.

The whole-village model

The IPA works with two programs that go beyond a single project: Adopt a Village and the Accelerated Development Program, which addresses all six fronts at once in the same community. By 2021, that program had expanded to eleven communities.

The logic is straightforward, and it’s the one the club stands by: a water system without a school, or a school without a road, or a road without a way to make a living, doesn’t change anyone’s life. Things hold together or they don’t.

With an annual budget the foundation places between $200,000 and $350,000, and with volunteer work and local counterparts added in, the estimated impact in Honduras is close to a million dollars a year.

The key to the city

In October 2018, the Municipality of Copán Ruinas gave Peter Martin the key to the city. It’s a ceremonial gesture, but it says something real: the partnership stopped being a foreign project and became part of the municipality’s own landscape.

For the club, the IPA is the answer to the question every small club asks itself: how do you do something big with few members? Like this. By bringing what no one else can — the knowledge of the ground and a word you keep — and finding partners willing to bring the rest.

See also what the club is working on and how to get involved.