By Kristin Lietz | Program Director
This month the world celebrates International Women's Day, a day to shine a light on the situation of women all over the world. As we approach the day the news here in Mexico is full of stories about women. The vast majority about how the femicide rate has skyrocketed over the past years and other forms of violence against women are on the rise. There are some stories about women having improved situations, and most of these are about women from rural areas working for change, We would like to highlight two women who have worked hard to give their daughters a different life.
Last weekend we had a visit from a foundation which supports our work. When we host visitors, we like to drive out to the villages where our students are from and meet their families. We pile into our fifteen passenger van and drive out narrow country roads to visit the families. The visits are an excellent opportunity to connect with the family, the students' home community and understand where they come from. This past week we went out to the village of San Miguel, about an hour drive from Juchitan (if you take your vehicle). San Miguel is the municipal seat for a vast area of cloud forest, mostly uninhabited, in Eastern Oaxaca. We have two students from the village.
Aided, 16, is a high school student who has been at Centro de Compartimiento for two years. She´s from a small family, the oldest of two children. Her father is an agricultural worker and her mother is a housewife, or as you say in Spanish, ama de casa, which means master of the house, a much more apt title. Her father has a field outside of town where he plants corn, and on his small plot in town, the family has four different kinds of bananas, green beans, and several other fruit trees. They grow enough to eat and to sell a bit for cash. He would like to grow more but is limited by being dependant on rain. Aided has a maternal aunt who is confined to a wheelchair because of illness. Her mother, grandmother, aunts, and uncles worked hard to take care of her aunt and pay for cousin´s college education so that her cousin could have a good enough job to work and take care of her mother in the future. Today her cousin, also a CDC graduate, is working full time she not only helps to cover the costs of her own mother´s care she but also convinced Aided´s family to send her to CDC so she could improve her own chances. It is taking the effort of three generations of women to put Aided through school, but all know that it is worth the effort.
Bris, 18, is the third of four children she is in her first year studying to be a lawyer. Her two older sisters are married with children of their own, neither graduate from high school. Her father gave up farming several years ago when the land he worked no longer produced well due to draught. He works gathering firewood in the mountains. Because of deforestation, he has to travel several hours on horseback to bring out four bundles of wood. Two bundles he keeps for his family oven, and two bundles he sells for $2.50 USD a piece. Bris' mother is from a village far back in the mountains, so far she says that as a child she never came into town. There was no school and she met and married her husband at the age of 14. She has had a hard life and looks in her mid-sixties, but since she was married at 14 and her oldest daughter is 35 we have to guess she is closer to 50. Every day she makes over 200 tortillas by hand, which she sells for one peso a piece. Her daily income is about ten dollars. She told us when she has a chicken she will make tamales to sell and once a month she makes sweet corn tamales to sell when the government education grants are given out in town. The family sends half their weekly income to Bris for her tuition, school supplies and transportation costs. Without Centro de Compartimeinto, they tell us, Bris would not be able to attend school.
We are so honored to go and meet these valiant women who are working so hard to change the lives of their daughters. We thank you for supporting these families in their struggle to keep their daughters in school. Every donation given through the Global Giving platform goes to support our students. We hope that you consider a donation to our program this month in honor of International Women´s day. The platform also provides an option to become a monthly sponsor. With a gift of $50 USD, you can sponsor the nutritional needs of one student for a month.
Thank you. Together we are improving our world, one girl at a time.
By Kristin Lietz | Program Director
By Kristin Lietz | Program Director
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