Reading Village

I'm sending this note from Guatemala, where I'm spending two weeks working with staff, alumni, and youth leaders to refine our program and continue to grow our impact. During my visit I've had the joy of reconnecting with some of our very first youth leaders, the brave teens who helped launch our work so many years ago.

Rosmery was one of the six original youth leaders back in 2009 when the Leaders and Readers Program began. When I first met and interviewed her for acceptance into the program she said she wanted to become a teacher and I asked her why. She said that she wanted to help the children in her community have a better life and she saw education and literacy as the most promising ways to make that happen. To our devastation, Rosmery's mother died in the first year of the program. When I saw her just the other day - more than 7 years later - I asked her where she would be today if she didn’t have the benefit of the Reading Village scholarship at that time. No longer a reserved albeit ambitious teen, Rosmery answered with the eloquence of a young woman and community role model. She said she’d be working in the fields or married off or making tortillas, whatever she could do to make a living. She painted a picture of a life in a single room home, a dirt floor, manual labor. But instead of that being her reality, at 26 years of age Rosmery is the school teacher she dreamed of becoming; she has a fiancé she has chosen herself. She is a brilliant educator in a system that literally puts children last, and she attributes her passion and effectiveness in no small part due to the leadership training she received with Reading Village. 

We couldn't be more proud of the impact that our program has had on the trajectory of Rosmery's life. Nor could we be any more impressed with how she has leveraged her strengths to transform the lives of the children in her village. Rosmery is a perfect example of why investing in alumni and supporting them to remain connected to our work is our sixth building block of human capital. Their talent and contribution - both to our program as well as to their communities - remain integral to our success, every step of the way.

Thank you for investing in Rosmery all those years ago, and thank you for your partnership in this important work,