Education Mexico Project #18042

Higher education for indigenous students in Mexico

by Centro de Compartimiento, A.C.

Project Report | May 13, 2023
The Next Step

By Kristin Lietz | Program Director

Aided

Aided joined our program a little over seven years ago when she left her home village in the Chimalapas cloud forest and came to Juchitan to study high school. She is the oldest of two daughters. Her father is a farmer, and her mother makes and sells tortillas and other foodstuffs from their home. This June Aided will finish her course work for her degree Engineering in Renewable Energy.

It is not easy to leave home to study for so many years, and not easy to live in a new city. Aided is a very loving and kind young woman but she confided to us that she has not been able to make many friends here in town because her region of the state is considered by those in here in town to be violent and backwards, and that stigma has impeded making many friends outside our program. In addition, these past several years have been very difficult for Aided, during the years of the pandemic she lost two aunts and an uncle, and her family had to leave their home go to her mother’s home village to take care of her grandfather. Unfortunately the village where she is living has seen violence recently and when she is there she feels unsafe and the family does not leave the home much.

Aided will not be leaving the program in June. She has asked to remain an additional semester because part of her national licensure program is a six-month unpaid practicum. She is currently looking for a business to host her practicum. As our region is a hub of wind energy there are multiple places to look at, as well as the national electric company that has a regional office locally. Yet that six-month deadline looms in her mind.

Now we are working with her in the next step in her life, leaving Centro de Compartimiento, the home she has lived in for the past seven years, and starting to work and live on her own. The expectations of family are heavy. Her cousin, the first person in her family to have a college degree sat her down several weeks ago and told her that now that she is graduating, she needs to find a job and start supporting her family. Her cousin said that in her mind she should divide her pay into four parts, one for housing, one for food and other basic needs, one for her mother and one to put her younger sister through school.

In the minds of many families in the region the only reason a woman should be out of her parents’ home before marriage is to send money back home. So, we are now having a lot of conversations with her as she voices her fears and dreams about the future. She wants to find a job locally in the wind farms and live in the region. We are working with her on the conversations she will need to have with her family about what they feel are her obligations to them and especially her younger sister. The work she is doing is planning the conversations, working out her points, deciding with whom and when it is best to talk, all this while in finals and hunting for a practicum position. It is hard for all here to think that by the end of the year Aided will not long be with us as a student.

Aided has expressed many times her gratitude for the staff at Centro de Compartimiento, and the programs that we have that have given her the skills to look at her life and family in new ways and plan well for the next steps in her life. She said that college always seemed like an end goal, but now it is almost accomplished, and she needs to look at what comes next. With your support for our programs Aided is on the brink of her dream of finishing college and is now dreaming about her future. We thank you for your support of Aided and other young women like her, whom without your support would not be able to continue their education. We hope that you can continue to support our programs with your generous donations and help more young women like Aided to reach for their dreams.

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Jan 16, 2023
Building Trust

By Adela Toledo Luis | General Director

Jeny and her father

One of the most precious assets that we have at Centro de Compartimiento is trust. It is a tremendous responsibility taking on the care and superision of young women and trust is a very important element of the process. This is a process that takes time and with our student we have plenty of time to build trust and work on our relationships. But our work does not only impact the young women but their families as well and it our culture it is not easy for families to let their young women leave home and live with complete strangers. For this reason it is very important for us to get to know the families of our students.

Most of the time we take to the road ourselves and travel to their communities to meet thier families. Usually our students live about 1.5 to 3 hours from our program center. Close enough to go and return in one day. Our goal is to spend time with the families and listen to them. It is important for us to hear about their efforts to support their daughter's education, especially in these difficult economic times.

None of the parents have a secure salary, They all depend on the land and sea: agriculture, animal husbandry or fishing. The women are mostly housewives who supliment their income through small project such as making tortillas. It is difficult for them to spend the funds needed to travel and visit our program center.

Jeny is one of our scholarship recipients, she is from the community of Santa Catarina Yetzelalag, located in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, nine hours away from Juchitán. A distance that made it diffucult for us to make a home visit. Jeny's parents wanted to know more about us and understand why we support young people. To them it was unbelievable that there was a place like the CDC, where young people could live and receive all the necessary support while studying. They did not trust that their daughtes needs were fully subsidized by donations. They worried that there was something hidden behind the support. Moved by this curiosity and concern, Antonio, her father made the long trip to visit with us.

Our meeting in the living room of the house was amazing, he told us that he found the place, the support, the people, the environment, the house and the whole project incredible. He was surprised at our openess to let him ask us very direct questions about his doubts and concerns. This opening allowed us to enter into a deep and interesting conversation about our mission and why we believe women deserve opportunities.

One of his major concerns was that the family would have financial debts with the CDC once their daughters finished their studies. He was forthright telling us he could not pay and did not want any surpises. We assured him that he would owe us nothing. The families pay for the school costs and transportation and that we ask no payment for our own services. We talked about our our goals and vision; to awaken young people to their own mission, seek well-being, and common good, the desire to serve, heal, the dream that they finish university and be a blessing to humanity. That is our payment.

In Antonio we met a father who believes in and encourages his daughters, the opportunity to share with him was wonderful.

Jeny is a semester away from graduation. In June she will complete here degree in Architecture at the Instituto Tecnológico del Istmo and her achievemts fill us with pride and emotion. Thanks to you and your support for our programs she will leave to start her proffesional career with no financial debt for her self or family. We thank you for your onging support for Jeny and her family. Helping parents like Antonio see his daughter fufilling her dreams.

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Sep 16, 2022
Back to Normal

By Kristin Lietz | Progam Director

Ximena and her grandmother

We are backfor the new school year and after two and half years of remote and hybrid learning our students have finally started this school year in-person full-time. We finished last year with all our students completing their school year and returning for the next school year or graduating. As we sat down for our opening talks and events it was odd but wonderful to have a house full once again. We welcomed three new students, all first-year college students. Two are from villages about two hours away from town and one was raised here in town, but her family moved out of the area and she needs lodging to continue her education.

Two young women who were in our program finished a level of education. Ximena, finished her nursing degree this summer and now heads out for her year of national service. Ximena was with us for two and a half years during her college education and we are very proud of her accomplishments. Ximena was orphaned at a young age and was raised by her maternal grandmother. She is the first in her family to complete a college education. Years of sacrifice and love from her grandmother have paid off. Her goal is to support her younger sister to complete high school and attend college as well.

Jatziri finished her high school. She first in her family to complete high school, and her family is very proud. She is from a small rural village in the northern part of our region. She is taking a year off from school to earn some money for college. She wants to study graphic design, a field for which there is no program in our region. Her family is looking into options for her to work for a while, then attend school in one of the two cities that are about 4 hours distant. She has a younger sister who too dreams of attending high school, as she is only in 6th grade it will be a few years yet. It is wonderful to see our young women as models for their younger siblings and other family members.

As we start our school cycle we are so grateful to all the people, like you, who make this work possible. Without your support, we could not be able to give our young women the chance for a different life through higher education. Please consider talking to family and friends about our programs so that we can continue to expand our work and help more young women reach their dreams.

Jatziri and her family

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