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Celebrating 45 years since being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras and 29 years since driving a school bus to Guaimaca, Honduras from Pittsfield, MA with wife, Kelley, also a Peace Corps volunteer, and our three year old daughter, Sonrisa. Here is a summary of our accomplishments and an idea of current plans and needs.

2024 was quite a year for Berkshire Amistad. Our work was concentrated in three areas. In Guaimaca we had the library open, in Intibuca, we provided 45 Lenca students and their families ‘tuition free’ middle school/high school and here in the Berkshires we worked on collecting equipment for the next shipment. And, Kelley and I spent two weeks at the library a couple months ago.

Library in Guaimaca

Our library in Guaimaca (the only library in Guaimaca) was taken care of this year by a local college student. She was able to help students with their homework and taught many how to use the internet-enabled computers. A major boost to the library was Kelley’s work. Kelley went through all the books, many of which have been donated over the years from the community.

Kelley cleaned and organized all the books, I secured the book shelves to the wall. Going into the 2025 school year the library has a good selection of books. The computers have two programs installed, one for typing skills and the other for computer skills. The free library is ready for the start of the new school year in February.

Middle/high school in Intibuca

Our middle/high school in Intibuca has been a blessing for the parents that have no alternative education for their children. This year, ten administrators and teachers provided an exemplary education for 45 indigenous Lenca students. Besides the required curriculum they also taught business development, sewing, welding, electrical installation and music.

I cannot say enough about the work of Edmundo Mendez Sanchez and his wife Ilsi. They are responsible for everything happening at this school. A big part of this work, is keeping up with paperwork, not only required by the school system, but by the city of Intibuca. Because of Edmundo’s diligence in this area, the students are recognized by the national education system for their efforts and are eligible for college classes.

Shipping supplies to Honduras

Every Tuesday, a warehouse in Hatfield, Massachusetts receives a 40ft container of bananas. Those bananas are from Honduras and the now unloaded container is brought back to Honduras for more bananas, every week. Every week, Americans throw good things away like crutches, wheelchairs, even pianos.

I put the two things together. From the hospitals to the schools, to anyone that wants to protect our environment by reusing good equipment. I collect good used equipment that I know can be used in Honduras. Edmundo, is again, a crucial part of our shipping. Due to his diligence acquiring licenses and staying on top of political changes in Honduras, our license to import “tax-free” has been approved.

I am so glad the Peace Corps sent me to Honduras because of its proximity and delivery of fruit. It has been so easy to continue to protect my environment while being a good neighbor to those who feed us.

Planning for 2025

2025 will be a very busy year for Berkshire Amistad. February 7th we will host an open house at our warehouse, at the rear entrance to 117 4th St. Pittsfield, MA, from Noon – 6PM. Guest of honor will be a Honduran doctor I have known for more than 15 years. Dr. Alverez works for the country of Honduras, the government of Xiomara Castro and manages 103 clinics. His clinics see 125,000 patients a year, including 65,000 children under 5.

Dr. Alvarez will be visiting to thank some of the people and organizations that have donated in the past and inspect the equipment we have collected and have ready in the warehouse. The public will be invited to meet Dr. Alvarez and bring more wheelchairs and crutches. Gabriel, the graduating college student, and lawyer who took care of our building and program for three years, will spend a few months with us in the Berkshires as we prepare the next shipment.

As I write this, more than 50 students have submitted application to our private school in Intibuca. Our library in Guaimaca never shut down during the December and January school vacation. We also will be very busy getting our triple container shipment ready to go. I would also like to bring deliver a few vehicles to Guaimaca and maybe Malpiassillo, Nicaragua, one of Pittsfield’s Sister Cities.

We have new ways for people to get involved this year, besides the financial support that is a constant requirement. We need English teachers in Intibuca, where the community would provide housing and food. We need housing here in the Berkshires for Gabriel while he is working with me to prepare the containers and the vehicles for next summer. He might be one of the drivers. He would love to trade lessons in English for ones in Spanish. We need people to find wheelchairs, crutches, sewing machines, and carpentry equipment.

Please let me explain further about those three areas for 2025.

Guaimaca

In Guaimaca we are already talking to the schools in our area about how the library will be able to work with them this year. We are taking advantage of a quiet time in the main building to make some major improvements. Gerson was one of the first students at the building and is taking care of the building and organizing the construction efforts. These long overdue improvements will help to display the medical equipment we will be sending to Honduras. When we ship from Pittsfield, we will be shipping directly to our building in Guaimaca.

For those that are not familiar with the story of our building. After hurricane Mitch devastated much of Honduras, good friends of mine from the Unitarian Universalist church of Pittsfield gave me $15,000. I came home (I was in Honduras), found a building in Springfield that was slated to be demolished. When the owner turned off the power and the water, he told me I could take whatever I wanted. My friends at Formel Motor Company set me up with a truck and for 10 days I went back and forth to Springfield.

From sunrise to sunset, I removed 40 solid wood doors with door knobs, hinges and screws. I removed circuit breaker panels, wire, outlets, switches, and even some lights. I took sinks, toilets and a lot of the stainless steel mirrors. Once I got the building disassembled and back to Housatonic, we bought a large decommissioned school bus in Boston. At the junkyard I loosened up the seats and put the parts of the building in the bus. We drove that bus to Delaware and had it shipped to Honduras.

In Guaimaca we unloaded the bus and the next day someone bought the bus and paid all my costs. I had $15,000 in my pocket again and I hired the people who lived in the neighborhood to help me build this beautiful building.

Another project we are working on in Guaimaca is a plan to partner up with an informal education group affiliated with the national school system. This connection would be in line with our initial idea, which was to provide technical education and would relieve us from the monthly cost associated with providing classes in sewing, carpentry, and welding. This is why we are currently asking for sewing machines and carpentry equipment.

So, in Guaimaca we can keep the cost low or we can support more programs. 100% of donations go directly into supporting all our programs. If you want your donation to go to a specific area like education or health care, just let us know.

Intibuca

Intibuca is our next large program. This year will be our 4th year. The first year was easy to be tuition free with the founder and Edmundo teaching, and with just 7 students. Now the school has grown in student population and courses offered. So far this year, over 50 students have applied. Beside the required curriculum, classes are offered in business development, music, sewing, welding, and electrical installation. This takes a dedicated group of professionals to provide this education for these Lenca students and they do this partly to help out. It costs almost $5,000 monthly to pay them all. In Intibuca we do not have the luxury of our own building, as we do in Guaimaca. We rent a building for $1,000 a month. Someday we would like to break ground on a school near where most of these students live.

shipping

The final major part of what we will be doing in 2025 is shipping. First three containers and then the vehicles. The first container is slated for Marcala, Honduras. One of the advantages of visiting Honduras is that you can witness the widespread need. Of course the most important thing about shipping now, is our import license which saves us from paying import tax. Now, when I visit a clinic and say I am going to give them a piece of equipment, I do not have to ask for more. I can control where a particular piece of equipment might go.

For example, if you would like to see an exam table in very good condition, donated to a clinic in Honduras, I have done all the work. I have 45 years of contacts and experience and I have collected three containers worth of good medical and school equipment. All that remains is to raise the money to ship all the equipment. To ship an exam table from Pittsfield all the way to Guaimaca is $500.

$100 sends a hospital bed or stretcher. $50 sends a wheelchair, $10 sends a walker and for $5, I can give free crutches to someone in Honduras. We always invite the recipients of this good used equipment the opportunity to contribute to shipping costs. Our non-profit status allows us to send a full container from Pittsfield to Guaimaca for $8,000.

Side note: The beginning of 2024 we started renting space in Pittsfield, in preparation for this shipment. We are paying on the space we are using, anywhere from $500 to $1,000. One of the advantages to renting this space is that we can prepare all the equipment for shipping and know where everything is going when the truck arrives. So, when the truck driver leaves Hatfield, MA after delivering bananas, he can arrive at our warehouse in Pittsfield and we can fill the truck, put a seal on it and send it south.

The second and third containers will go to Guaimaca, where the receiving clinics will pick up their share. Dr. Alverez will be able to pick out the equipment his 103 clinics need. I know he always needs sterilizers and nebulizers; let’s hope we can send him home with plenty of them.
We’ll discuss vehicles in the next news update. Please keep in touch here.

PITTSFIELD — Eddie O’Toole is a man with ideas and energy in abundance, and he’s eager to share both.

At age 68, when he’s not fixing cars as an independent auto mechanic, O’Toole is busy coordinating volunteer efforts and donations for his nonprofit organization, Berkshire Amistad.

On Saturday afternoon, his organization held an open house at the 117 Fourth St., Pittsfield warehouse where equipment donations are being stored until they can be loaded into a shipping container.

They’ll head to a port in Delaware and then loaded on a cargo ship to Honduras, where O’Toole served in the Peace Corps and later lived with his family for 13 years. The organization works with the people of Guaimaca, Honduras, and professor Edmundo Mendez Sanchez.

How does his wife Kelly keep up? “Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t,” she said, laughing.

That energy is driven by O’Toole’s enthusiasm and his resolute belief in the mission. That’s evident in the way his eyes light up when you ask him why he does this work.

“I think if people feed us, and we’re throwing good things away and they need it. I think we have to do this,” he said.
O’Toole readies used medical supplies headed for Honduras
Local News
O’Toole readies used medical supplies headed for Honduras

Recently, O’Toole’s group collected unused wheelchairs and crutches from UCP of Pittsfield; filing cabinets, chairs and computer tables from Berkshire Community College; and exam tables, hospital beds and wheelchairs from Fairview Hospital and Berkshire Medical Center. The open house was held with the hope of drawing volunteers to help the operation, and donations to pay for the shipping.
stacks of crutches

In their Pittsfield warehouse, Berkshire Amistad has organized discarded hospital and personal medical equipment into rows that will fit inside of empty container trucks that would otherwise stay empty on their trips back to Honduras after delivering banana shipments in the U.S.
STEPHANIE ZOLLSHAN — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
GONE BANANAS

How will the equipment go from the Berkshires to Honduras? There’s where his abundance of ideas kick in.

O’Toole became aware that a company that ships bananas grown in Honduras was delivering a shipping container full of the fruit to a warehouse in Hatfield. Figuring there’s no reason the container should go home empty, O’Toole arranged for it to stop in Pittsfield on its way back to a shipping terminal in Delaware, so he can load it with the donations he’s collected.

Has he ever.

Inside the warehouse, donated items are neatly grouped together within the boundaries of the containers in which they’ll travel — 8 feet by 10 feet — and prepared for transport. The crutches are taped and zip-tied together. The walkers have been disassembled so more of them fit. So have the office desks and chairs he gathered at a tag sale at Berkshire Community College — items he said the college had in storage for a decade.

There are exam tables — “you can turn a closet into an exam room with an exam table,” he explained — as well as hospital beds, chairs and other items that could help provide medical care to people in need.

And this isn’t all; O’Toole has more donations stored in a warehouse in West Stockbridge.

“That right there is 100 crutches. I can’t only ship 100 crutches,” O’Toole said, pointing to where they were neatly stacked. “The last shipment I shipped was 85 wheelchairs, 300 crutches and 50 walkers. I drove to Delaware and put it in a container and shipped it down there. In one day, we gave away 60 wheelchairs. So this is nowhere near what I need, as far as wheelchairs, so I need to really find who’s throwing away wheelchairs — or anything that could be valuable.”

O’Toole has given equipment to people in need in the Berkshires as well.

KINDNESS AND INGENUITY

Donations help, too — like the $7,500 from an unnamed Pittsfield donor that allowed O’Toole to purchase a moving truck that once belonged to Tanglewood. On Saturday, that truck was still full of the used office equipment he picked up at BCC; he’s getting volunteers to unload the contents into the warehouse.

The filing cabinets O’Toole obtained from BCC could house another of his ideas.

“I can’t ship filing cabinets empty” he said, opening one to reveal its contents: air. “So if people donate eyeglasses, I can put 1,200 eyeglasses in one drawer of a filing cabinet. How useful, right? I could get people from all over the country to just put 10 pairs of reading glasses in a bag and mail them to me.”

Those drawers could also hold plastic medicine bottles. In Honduras, medications are often distributed in bags. But O’Toole knows of a clinic that could give out the bottles instead, and allow patients to re-use them.

“It’s a silly thing, but it’s a good example that we throw so much stuff away that people can use,” he said.

The work has real value in people’s lives, he said, offering the example of a Honduran woman who needed a prosthetic leg. O’Toole obtained one and fitted it for her.

A year later, when he returned to visit, she told him “You never realize how much you change things when you’re gone … All I wanted to do was wash the dishes, and you made that possible. I can wash the dishes now.”

“It’s crazy, right?” he said.

Then there was the time, while O’Toole was living in Honduras, that Guaimaca needed a community building after Hurricane Mitch heavily damaged the country. Thanks to a $15,000 donation from a Lenox couple, O’Toole found an abandoned building facing demolition in Springfield, took it apart, and sent its contents to Central America.

By school bus.

“I came home, I disassembled the building and put it in a school bus” that he bought with the money, O’Toole said. The seats came out and everything that could be re-used went in. He drove the bus to Delaware, thankful it was never pulled over for weighing, and met the cargo ship in Honduras.

“I sold the bus. I got all my money back,” O’Toole said. “I had solid wood, doors, electrical panels, outlet switches, and it all fit in the school bus. And I had $15,000 in my pocket again, and with my neighbors, we built a building.”

O’Toole first came to the Berkshires to visit a friend from the Air Force, in which he served for four years, and settled in Pittsfield. He and his wife, Kelly, a testing technician in the city wastewater treatment department, met in the early 1990s at protests against the first U.S. war in Iraq in front of the Silvio O. Conte Federal Building on Columbus Street in Pittsfield. They’ve been married more than 30 years and have an adult daughter, Sonrisa, who works as a bilingual mental health support specialist.
ASKING QUESTIONS

Where did O’Toole’s do-it-yourself streak and willingness to take on challenges come from? He thinks it started with his first job, at an auto garage.

Growing up on Long Island, the fifth of 15 children, O’Toole did not want to attend the same high school as his four older siblings. His mother said that was fine, as long as he got a job.

So O’Toole visited a nearby auto garage, where the manager, a man named Tex, hired him on the spot and asked him to wash the windows and check the oil of every car that drove in.

“I said, ‘Tex, I have never checked the oil on anything.’ He said ‘Can you ask questions?’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I can ask questions.’ He said, ‘If you can ask questions, you can do anything.’”

“So all morning long I was asking questions,” O’Toole continued. “[Tex] comes over to me later and says, ‘Listen, we need to put a water pump in this Renault station wagon. Today.’ I said ‘Tex, I have never touched a car before!’”

“He said, ‘Can you ask questions?’ I said ‘Yes, I can ask questions!'”

Tex offered the same reply, O’Toole said: “‘You can do anything if you ask questions.’ And I really think that a lot of what has happened in my life is kind of because of that.”

Reach Greg Sukiennik at gsukiennik@berkshireeagle.com or at 413-496-6249.