Law firm partner and clerk create a foundation to build schools in Honduras
FEIH co-founder Jon Henes with Honduran students outside their newly completed school. Photographs by Catherine Lojo.
The foundation is the result of an inspiring and unusual partnership between Ramiro Ocasio, a records assistant at the firm who started in the mail room 10 years ago, and partner Jon Henes.
Helping in the Central American country wasn’t new for Ocasio. The New Yorker, who was born in Boston but spent his childhood in his parents’ native El Progreso, has been assisting there for years in an informal way, bringing food, toys, shoes and sundries to desperately poor villages across the countryside during his annual visits.
But a trip in 2012 led to an entirely new level of largesse. During a casual discussion of holiday plans, Ocasio told Henes about the upcoming trip to Honduras that he and his son were taking and what they planned to bring to the villages. Henes was immediately moved and knew he had to contribute. “Here’s this guy in the mail room, earning whatever he’s earning in New York City, and taking his savings from those earnings and going to Honduras to give back,” Henes says.
FEIH co-founders Jon Henes and Ramiro Ocasio (wearing glasses) share their pride with Honduran students outside their newly completed school.
Henes, a father of five, wrote Ocasio a check for his trip, but he also went one step further and sent an email to other lawyers in the firm, who pitched in quickly and generously.
The following December, Ocasio decided to change up his strategy from handout to hand-up. This time, he would bring friends and family with him to rebuild a school in Honduras. In no time at all, Henes and others throughout the office were able to pull together nearly $10,000. The money went a long way, Ocasio says. “We painted, we fixed the bathroom, we bought white boards and chairs and a lot of soccer balls.”
Ocasio brought back a video to show everyone at Kirkland what their donations helped to achieve. What happened next, however, was astounding: That semester, for the first time ever, not a single child dropped out of school.
That’s when Henes realized the Kirkland crew could offer much more than just money. “I said to Ramiro, ‘I love you coming to my office and telling me at the last minute that you’re going to do these great things, but I think it’s time to establish this as a real foundation,’ ” Henes recalls. “Kirkland will do the legal work to set it up; I’ll help you put together a board, and let’s see if we can really make a difference.”
The Foundation for Education in Honduras is now up and running. With a staff of three there, it’s employing local workers, building and stocking schools, outfitting students and actively working with communities.
Henes credits Ocasio’s passion for success in Honduras and at the firm. Since the organization, known as FEIH, launched in 2014, more than 200 Kirkland employees from corner office to cubicle have donated money and time. Even the Kirkland & Ellis Foundation, the Chicago-based firm’s multimillion-dollar charitable giving initiative, has kicked in.
As a result of the firm’s support, FEIH was able to break ground last October on its first new facility, the Santiago Morales primary school, which opened in January; Henes and Ocasio were both on hand for the ribbon-cutting.
It’s the first of five primary schools FEIH plans to build across Honduras—which is considered the second-poorest country in Central America—over the next three years, a commitment it made at the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting.
“This has been the most amazing thing—I am so humbled and honored,” Ocasio says. “When Jon said, ‘Let’s put together a foundation and do bigger things,’ I thought: ‘This goes to show you that anything is possible in America.’ “
This article originally appeared in the March 2016 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “The Learning Alliance: A law firm partner and clerk create a foundation to build schools in Honduras.”
