Master Plan

The decrepit building that a U.S. school planner spotted in Honduras a decade ago has led to blueprint for better facilities.

San Pedro Sula, Honduras

During a volunteer stint on a hydroelectric-power project in the mountains of Honduras in 1996, William DeJong began the walk. As the president of DeJong Inc., one of the top school facility planners in the United States, he wanted to study the conditions of schools in the rugged Central American countryside far from his home in Dublin, Ohio.

Call it fate, or one of life’s little surprises, but the walk has continued for nine years, during which he joined forces with Honduran officials to catalog the conditions of more than 17,000 school sites. The resulting database helps direct development money to where it is most needed. DeJong also founded the nonprofit agency Schools for the Children of the World, or SCW, and has overseen the planning and construction of several prototype schools.

“It’s just been a little overwhelming,” he says by phone in July on the eve of his 28th trip to Honduras. “If anybody had told me all of this was going to happen, I would...