Fight Poverty: Educate Women in Panama

Carolina lost more than anyone should when her house went up in flames. Now she lives in a makeshift apartment in Casco Antiguo, a neighborhood that we focus on with our social programs and that she refused to abandon, with a small room and several other family members, her children and mother included. Very few would’ve blamed Carolina for having a defeatist attitude.

When we complain about our problems, they seem to be the most important thing at the time. It’s hard to put them in context and zoom out because they’re very real to us. But when we encounter people in Carolina's position, we often wonder whether, if we were forced to shoulder burdens twice that size, we would be able to move forward.

Carolina did.

Losing your house, however, is not the same as losing your home. For Carolina and for many of our students at the Foundation, home is a synonym for family. This means that Carolina lost both. One of her children, a boy who had yet to reach his ninth year of life, passed away during the fire. He left behind his twin brother and his entire family. Instead of wallowing in her pain (and could we have faulted her for it?) she decided she would never allow something like this to happen to her family again.

She joined the most recent cycle of our GlobalGiving Project CAPTA (Or Fight Poverty: Help Educate the Women of Panama) and graduated last Thursday, going as far as winning a scholarship from our friends at the a local dental clinic for "The Perfect Smile". For many of our women, it is a hard lifestyle change to come to the Foundation from 8 to 5 and acquire knowledge in a formal setting. Can we stop for a second and imagine how much harder it is to do so when the shadow of a loss like this tried to poison Carolina's mind and drive her to self-pity and apathy every day? The mental healthcare professionals who work with us at the Foundation reported that Carolina would have episodes during the program where she would be overcome with grief, sometimes collapsing. But she had other children at home that depended on her. So after one of these bouts of grief, she would always come back the next day, ready to continue her lessons. Nothing stopped her.

Carolina did not only overcome the many social hurdles placed in front of people in her position. By graduating, she also overcame a psychological pain that she couldn’t simply escape when she went home at 5 every day. With this recent graduation, her diploma might represent her new accreditation, but it also represents the love she had and still has for her deceased son. She honors him and the rest of her family by not letting anyone or anything, not even her own tragic past, dictate her future.

(The names in this report have been changed to ensure the privacy of our beneficiaries.)

Links:

• Foundation Website