(Notes by Angi Ma Wong)

Slide Presentation by Rotarians Susan Hill and Ted Rose, Project Amigo, Colima, Mexico:

           I’m going to start by telling you a true story.  A neighbor in our village is illiterate.  She had two sons, neither of whom could read.  One son was disabled and required anti-seizure medication.  This woman kept in her refrigerator various food items, the bag with her son’s medication and a similar-looking bag that contained herbicide used in their corn patch.  Each bag was clearly labeled.  One fateful morning, the mother asked her son to give his brother his anti-seizure medication.  Well, you can imagine the outcome.  The worst possible outcome.  After two days of suffering, the boy died.

          One of our favorite slogans about reading that’s displayed on bumper stickers and in car windows around Colima state is this one:  Reading is power.

          What would your life be like if you couldn’t read? What job would you have?   How well could you support your family?  How would you check a fact or proposal to learn if it was true? How could you know that you were voting for the candidate who shared your views?  Would you even care?  What might your view of the world be – compared to what it actually is because you can read?  Statistics show that if you couldn’t read, you would most likely be poor.

          We think whoever taught you to read is without doubt one of the most important people who ever touched your life.  Reading IS power.

          In rural Mexico, only 60% of primary school graduates go on to junior high school.  Of those who do, only 45% will graduate from high school.   Nationwide in Mexico, only 20% of students who finish high school go on to college.  The percentage of people living in poverty or extreme poverty in Mexico is estimated at 40%.  Is there any doubt in your mind that lack of education and poverty in Mexico are related?

          The Palos Verdes Sunset Rotary Club and many of you individually have been supporting Project Amigo’s students since 2002.  You’ve sponsored children’s incentive programs and higher education students’ scholarships.  Following are some of their success stories:

 

One of your students, Rocio Beltran, will graduate from college this summer with a degree in Finance!  She’s working on her thesis this semester, in addition to her final classes.  The thesis is the last step to receive her certification and degree.  Then she will look for a job.  She feels confident that she’ll succeed.

          This year, the Club is also sponsoring Amaranta de la Lima.  She’ll finish junior high this summer and start her first year of high school this fall.  The Club’s third student, Marissa Cruz, will start her last year of high school in the fall.

          Both of these young women have lofty aspirations.  Amaranta wants to become a human rights lawyer, and Marissa thinks she will become a pharmaceutical chemist.

          This school year, a total of 100 students received scholarships:  29 junior high school students, 33 high school students, and 38 students at the University of Colima.

          Thirty-four of our students have graduated from the University with professions that include Law, Medicine, Nursing, Teaching, Business Administration and Engineering. All of them are enjoying steady employment, and many of them are donating 3% of their wages to the Project to help fund scholarships for other students. Project Amigo’s scholarships pay school registration fees, uniforms and shoes, school supplies, transportation to school and a hot meal.

          Some of our students live too far from the city of Colima to be able to attend college.  Project Amigo runs a boarding home to help these students.  Their housemother, Doña Chela, prepares three nutritious meals a day for them, and gives them lots of motherly love and support during the week while they are in her charge. They help her in turn, fulfilling their agreement to help clean and maintain the house and help in the kitchen.

          They benefit from the use of laptop computers and Internet access.

Rotarians and Rotary Clubs sponsor these students’ scholarships as part of their international service programs.  They maintain personal relationships with them via e-mail, and they get to meet them when they visit Project Amigo in person.

          We’ve been actively promoting education at a migrant labor camp for sugar cane cutters’ families since 1997.  The families come from the south of Mexico and represent the bottom of the socio-economic scale.  The workers are illiterate and speak the Indian dialects of their regions.  Their children learn Spanish when they start school.

          We built a school at the camp, and we pay the salaries of three teachers –two kindergarten teachers and a special education teacher.

          This poorest segment of Colima’s population is now seeing more than 60% of its children complete primary school.  We still have a long way to go to get them into secondary education – it’s a huge stretch for this group of impoverished people to envision a different life.

          But we’re on the way.  One of the migrant camp students, Edgar David, has become the first to start college!  He has younger sisters who are following his example.  Tania is in junior high school and shows much promise; and the littlest one, Laura, is in primary school.  She adores her brother, and it’s clear that he is a strong role model for her.

          When Edgar visits the labor camp now, he is no longer seen as an impoverished migrant worker.  The residents recognize that “one of their own” has become part of an effective team that has brought change and advancement to their lives over the years.  Fewer families migrate out of that camp each year – as they are seeing the benefits of their children attending school.

          Another way that we’re working to promote education throughout the state is to help teachers in the poor rural schools get the tools they need to inspire reading for fun and to further ignite a desire to learn.  Most children in rural villages come from homes that have no books.  Their parents can’t read.  These children start out at a disadvantage that’s foreign to most of us.  Reading is not only an important part of early education; it is also a critical element in developing creativity, social and communications skills.

          Thanks to Rotary clubs across the US and Canada partnering with the Rotary Clubs in the Colima area, visiting Rotarians work with the Mexican Rotarians to distribute books that the local clubs purchased thanks to Rotary Foundation matching grants.   The promotion of reading for fun has developed along two avenues.  One avenue distributes mini-libraries of 200 children’s books to rural schools; and the other avenue provides books that the children get to keep for their very own.

          I’d like to share what a literacy work week is like.

          You fly in on a Saturday.  We meet you at the Guadalajara airport and bring you to our village where you’ll be housed in nice accommodations and fed very well all week.  Your first day will be spent getting the books sorted and labeled.  Every book will have a bookplate pasted in it that names the partnering Rotary Clubs and The Rotary Foundation.  You’ll stack the books by title, and get them distributed into sets of 100 or 200 separate titles for delivery to schools.

          Every morning during the week, there’s an opportunity to enjoy our rural countryside with a brisk one-hour walk before breakfast.  During the week, you’ll see several of our project sites dedicated in one way or another to promoting education.  You’ll visit several rural primary schools each day where you’ll deliver the books, and you’ll get to sit with children and listen to them read to you.  The kids enjoy the opportunity to show off, and you can help them feel really good about themselves, and about reading!  We’ll teach you a couple of easy phrases to say that will encourage them and give them that special pat on the back and approval that every child needs and wants.

          Visitors find the literacy weeks to be rewarding and enriching.  No one has been left untouched by the experience of sharing books with children who are so eager to have them.

          You’ll enjoy many other fun and rewarding activities that will give you insights into the Mexican people and Mexican culture.  But most importantly, you will be part of an expanding effort to bring reading and functional literacy to children in the underserved populations of rural Colima.  With your help, little children will be inspired to continue their educations; and when they have completed high school and college, they will be part of a growing force of young people who bring an entirely new level of honesty and integrity and leadership to their communities.

          We started this presentation with a story about a child who died because his brother couldn’t read the package labels.  We’d like to end with a story about a couple of other young people who came from illiterate families in our village.

          Noe Hernandez was one of Project Amigo’s scholars starting in high school.  His was a poor, dysfunctional and splintered family. He was determined to build a better life for himself than his parents did, and managed to get straight A’s throughout his junior high and high school years. An eloquent writer, an ambitious young man, and driven by a desire to make a difference in his life and in his community, he determined to go to college.  He was accepted to the University of Colima’s Faculty of Law, and graduated from Law School in December 2009. That same month, he was elected as his village’s Commissioner, or Mayor.

          Among many improvements he brought to the village, Noe actively promoted education like no one has before.  He organized Project Amigo’s higher education scholars from the village to run homework clubs patterned after the homework clubs that Project Amigo runs for them. Noe’s homework clubs serve primary school kids who need a place to do homework and who need help with their homework. Help that these kids can’t get at home! Noe’s three-year term ended this past December.

          Another Project Amigo student who has been part of our program since she was in second grade is Mireya Rincon Torres.  Mireya’s family life was also filled with violence and dysfunction.  Like Noe, she was a determined and bright student – driven by her circumstances to make a difference in her own life, and in the lives of others.

          She’s motivated to serve by the visitors she’s met over the years who have helped her with scholarships, friendship and encouragement.  Mireya graduated from the University of Colima’s Law School in 2008, a semester ahead of Noe.  She’s been working as legal counsel for the State Secretary of Youth in addition to managing a small private law practice.

          Mireya ran for Noe’s position of Commissioner of our village this past December – and she won.  For the first time in its history, our village is being run by college-educated and motivated young people who are making a significant impact.

          One of Mireya’s missions is to continue Noe’s efforts to keep young children enrolled in school.  In addition, she’s working to get a junior high school established in our village.  A junior high school in our village will not only help the local students who finish primary school continue their education into junior high; it will also improve access to higher education for children from outlying poor villages who often discontinue their studies because they can’t afford the bus fare to the more distant villages that have junior high schools.

          Yes.  Reading IS power.  We hope you’ll consider attending a Project Amigo work week, and that you’ll continue to sponsor our students’ educations.  Working together, we’re helping deserving students emerge from a life of poverty onto an entirely new road of progress and opportunity!