Give Argentine Youth a Chance

Dear friends,

We have wonderful news to share with you! Microsoft has chosen our project to match every donation by 100%!!!! If you donate to our Jobs, Training And Education For Argentine Youth Project on Tuesday December 3rd, Microsoft will match your donation by 100% increasing your impact! If you want to make a good deed after Thanksgiving and before the next celebrations, please donate to our project on Tuesday.

As we all recover from our Thanksgiving food comas and prepare for the next celebrations, my hope is that we still keep why we're thankful in the forefront of our minds. Many of us are blessed with loving families, thoughtful friends and bountiful food over these holidays, and for that we are all incredibly lucky. For that, I for one am incredibly grateful.

Others, like Cimientos' students, don't have the same support system that we do, and need a little more help than the rest of us to just get by. Many of our students lack the integral resources that are so easy for us to take for granted. 

On December 17th, high school classes finish in Argentina to start summer break. More tan 300 low- income youth like Sabrina will graduate from high school thanks to Cimientos` scholarships and mentoring. If we raise the funds we need, all of them could participate in our Graduates Network and recieve vital job and training opportunities to move on and succeed both personally and professionally.

Together, we can help the students who need us most, and give them a great reason to be thankful this holiday´ seasons. To truly make a difference, please contribute to our cause, and help change a student's life in an incredibly meaningful way, for the better.

In this report you can find many of our future graduates holding their diplomas on their last mentoring meetings and Sabrina`s words. You can change more low income youth lives like we are doing together with these students!!!

“I`m really, reallly happy because I finished high school and I want to thank every person that helped me achieve this goal. I`m proud of myself because I was responsible all the way despite all the adversities. I`m happy because now I have a high school diploma and because I met wonderful people such as my mates and teachers. I want to thank my family, my boyfriend and Cimientos for your support. I love all of you!”, Sabrina, new Cimientos Graduate from José C. Paz, Buenos Aires.

With gratitude,

María

During this year more than 50 members of Cimientos Graduates Network, participate in the new Online Coaching Program. Through this innovating system, low income youth are having online coaching to improve tools and skills that enable them to take full advantage of their future opportunities.

Youths are connected with volunteer mentors through a web site so they can develop coaching sessions and work on useful skills and tools. This coaching is expected to be a space for support, consultation and reflection about each youth's interests, doubts and expectations. Mentors help them in defining their own aims and projects and getting the opportunities to move towards them. This project also reinforces abilities to use new technologies as a key tool for social and professional integration.

This kind of help favors youth to appropriate tools and skills that empower them to have more personal and professional options such as obtaining scholarships and jobs in the long-term. This positively influences their family and community, helping to curb the vicious cycle of social exclusion and poverty in Argentina.

¡4 graduates got a job during their coaching!

Below you can read Liliana´s message to her mentor. Once again, we´d like to thank you for your support because thanks to it, we are changing many low- income youth lives so we hope this partnership is good for you as well and that our reports reflect the great impact of your donations. :)

Best regards,

María and Josefina- Graduates Network Team

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Hi María Victoria!!

Thank you very much for your advises! I´ll have them in to account.

Mi first week in work was great! The people I work with is really nice with me (they respect me a lot). We are five, two boys who have been working here for long, and three girls who start working with me, one coordinator and the director, but they are not in the office all the day, they arrive at 1 PM.

I´m in the reception area, but not as a private secretary. The hardest part of the work is when someone asks me thing I don’t know! But immediately I ask to find out the correct answer, I’m doing really good and is my third week here =)

My task is to write down and take note of every person who gets in to the office, ask them the purpose of their visit and after that, derivate them to the person in charge of receiving them.

I have a question to make you, is very important for me. As I’m in the reception, I’m the visible face of the company (that’s what my boss always says me haha). I treat every one in a very formal way, even though they are young or old, I don’t make any difference. Is this all right? I like being polite, it’s a pleasure for me, but my coworkers laugh at me and make me feel i’m doing something wrong.

I hope you don’t laugh with the question =)

Kisses!

Lily

Links:

• Conecta2 - Web site