By Kay Sweeney | Managing Director
In December, the Kateri Fund is ending one scholarship year and preparing for the next. The 2011 scholarship recipients celebrated another successful year with a "clausura" in Santa Clara la Laguna, Solola, Guatemala. Luciana Telon and Rosa Luc from San Jose Poaquil, Chimaltenango graduated from their high school career training with certificates to teach elementary school. Josefina Chacon To from Santa Clara la Laguna, Solola finished junior high and will continue in 2012 with her career training to be a bookkeeper. The other young women will all move on to the next grade level. Ten will be studying careers at the high school level and three will be in junior high school.
Luciana and Rosa both commented on the impact that the Fund and their education had on their life.
Luciana said, "“Thanks to God, to my mother, and to the Kateri Fund, I have reached my goal. It is a great happiness and satisfaction for me to have the title as an elementary school teacher. I hope to find a job in a school to exercise my profession and help my family. I am very happy because, during my years of study, many things have happened, many obstacles, loss of hope, and difficulties, but above all I confronted these problems and I am about to finish my last year of high school study and my practice teaching with the children. I liked it all. It was where I could evaluate my disabilities, my distresses, and capacities in order to improve and overcome them in all my life and to be more secure in my development later in my future.
Rosa commented,"“In the Kateri Fund, I learned many things, sharing with my fellow participants. Things that I didn’t know before. I made new friends through this fund and they come from other places. I liked the workshops a lot because they spoke of things that I didn’t know.”
Carmela Paz Bal, Emilsa Peren, and Juana Tuj, the Kateri Fund scholarship staff, have spent November visiting the home of the new applicants and interviewing them and their families. We have 22 new applicants who are qualified for scholarships because of their economic needs and their academic achievements to date. Our challenge will be to decide which of the applicants receives scholarships. We have adequate funding to add two new students for 2012. We are counting on funding through this Global Giving Challenge to make it possible to increase that number to at least five. The donations we have already received are moving us toward that goal.
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