Higher education for indigenous students in Mexico

It is hard to believe that we have been on the Global Giving site for six months. We are pleased with the results and donations keep coming in at a steady pace, although we are still working to learn to use the all the Global Giving benefits to increase our effectiveness. We thank you for your ongoing support of the young women at Centro de Compartimiento. We currently have eleven students in the program, two new students joined at the beginning of this semester due to extensive travel times from their homes to their schools. The new students are classmates of current program students who found out about our program from a classmate or family member. Although we will be spending the next several months doing radio interviews and sending flyers out to school, students mostly find us though a recommendation by a community member or student who has been through our program. We already have applicants for next year who heard of the program from a friend. Unfortunately in Mexico the trust level of the people for any system is extremely low. One our student´s fathers said when he first heard about the program he was skeptical, and researched the program to see if we were genuine. “It is not easy,” he said, “ to entrust your daughter to strangers, but when I looked into the program I heard nothing but good comments.”

The students finished their first semester of the school year with good results, the students did well passing the semester. Perla, who is in eleventh grade, did exceptionally well this semester bringing home the equivalent of an A+ average. Her family is very pleased with her progress. Perla is from a small village of about fifty families in the Chimalapas region of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is an area of constant land disputes between the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas and at times the roads to her village are blocked by one side or the other in the dispute that has lasted over sixty years.   Perla is the oldest of three children. Her father organizes a resin farming cooperative in their village and her mother is a house wife and raises chickens for extra income. Neither mother nor father has an education beyond middle school. Perla´s mother told us that she had the chance to leave the village to study when she was younger, but she had never left her home village and was too scared to leave and take the opportunity. Instead she got married at fourteen and had her first child at fifteen. Even though her parents married young they have a good loving relationship, and work hard to provide for their children. Since Perla´s father leaves the village a lot for his resin farming group, Perla´s mother also began to travel out of the village. She decided that her children would not have her fear of leaving the village and took Perla on as many trips as she could. Perla was an A student in grade and middle school and when offered the chance to study she did not hesitate even though it meant leaving her village. Many of our students travel home at the end of the month to visit their family, but Perla lives too far and can only go home over the long school breaks at Christmas and Easter. Perla says that it is hardest to be away from her little sister who is only six.

In Mexico the students begin to specialize in a field of study even in middle school. High school graduates can apply for a certificate as a technician in their fields, a certificate that, only a decade ago, was quite valuable in the work market.   Today most students think of it as an early start on their college career and they choose a specialty based on what they want to major in in college. Perla has chosen public heath as her specialty and although she is not sure about her college studies she is leaning toward medicine or nursing. She is concerned that the people in her village have to travel too far for medical services and thinks it would be beneficial to have a full time nurse in her village. Last month her sister suffered from strep throat and the family had to travel three hours for medical services. At Centro de Compartimiento we are honored to walk with Perla as she makes plans for her future and we are grateful for the support of our donors who make her continuing education possible.