Every individual has the right to education; however, this is not a reality for many kids and teenagers in impoverished communities in Honduras. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, sixty percent of the Honduran labor force has only a primary education.

Among other causes, we can cite the necessity of increasing family earnings, forcing children out of school to begin working. The lack of a parent education is also another aspect related to dropout rates: in 2016, for example, 78% of the students who dropped out had parents with either no education or primary education only.
The challenge of primary education does not compare at all with the daunting problems in secondary schooling in Honduras. To give some perspective, of the 23,835 schools, 21,761 are public schools, but only 10% or less offer secondary education. Moreover, close to 80% of those schools are in urban areas.
One consequence is that the number of students enrolled at the secondary level includes only 48% of youth of secondary-school age. Moreover, this number drops to 25% at the upper secondary level. In other words, only one in four youth age 16 to 18 is enrolled in upper secondary school. In practical terms, less than 500,000 kids in that age group are enrolled in secondary school in a country of more than 7 million people.

Another factor that accounts for the low enrollment rates at this level is criminal violence. A recent study observes that Honduran youth, ages 13-17, are the most targeted age group by criminal groups to engage them in activities such as extortion and drug trafficking among others. Therefore, it is imperative to bring to these communities initiatives to alleviate this educational problem.