Higher education for indigenous students in Mexico

After nearly eight months with no rain, the rain is forecasted every day next week.  This is normal in our region, we have very distinct rainy and dry seasons.  Our seasons divide into rainy, windy and hot, instead of warm and cold.  We are grateful for the rain. All of our student´s families rely on a good rainy season for their crops and food for their livestock. 

When the rains come it is nearly the end of the school year.  The students are heading into their final month of school.  After three years with Centro de Compartimiento (CDC), Aided will graduate from high school.  Her father is a farmer and her mother is a housewife. Aided (pronounced A-ee-ded) is the following the footsteps of her cousin Maylit who completed her college degree while in our residential program CDC. Aided wants to study an engineering degree in renewable resources.  Unlike in the US where students know months ahead of time which school they will attend.  Aided will have her entrance exam at the end of June and not know if she has been accepted until later in July.  

 A university opened a branch in Union Hidalgo about 20 minutes from Juchitan. The program is new and was set up to prepare local young people to take over the work at the wind farms that are being built in the region.  Right now we have many workers from other parts of Mexico and abroad. We are not yet sure if all this development is a boon or a bane for our communities here. We hope that in the future with more local people involved the companies will create healthier relationships with the local communities.  

Thanks to the support of donors like you, Aided was able to complete high school and is now looking at a different future.  We asked her how many of the students from her middle school class in her village had completed high school and were going on to college.  She said only about 20% had finished high school and she was the only one with dreams of college.  Three of her classmates are married and already have children.  Aided loves her home village and wants to stay in the region, but she wants a different future where she and her family are not struggling day to day to make ends meet.  For farmers, the biggest issue is the rain too much or too little and the crop fails, last year her father invested in a new tomatoes farm but lost the crop due to draught.   

Aided's new area of study depends on the weather as well, the sun and the wind.  So far we have been lacking neither in the region.  Thank you for walking with our students as they dream new dreams, for themselves and their families. 

• May 2019 News Letter (PDF)