09 February 2007
Mentors Gear Up To Help Latin American Kids Get into College
Program will focus on teaching English to Afro-Latino, indigenous students
Washington – The U.S. State Department is matching adult mentors with underprivileged high school students in seven Latin American countries to help the students learn English and prepare for college.
The pilot program, called the College Horizons Outreach Program, pays for English classes for two years for the students. By also having them spend time with volunteer mentors – in this case, professionals, many of whom speak some English – the program aims to give the students someone to talk to about career aspirations and someone who can be a friend during the challenging years of adolescence.
The young participants -- in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela -- are Afro-Latino or indigenous students who have academic promise but, because of financial hardship, are not likely to be on a college-preparation track.
The mentors are former participants of U.S. State Department Fulbright programs or international visitor programs; most speak some English.
Margarita Imano, a mentor who is a retired employee of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru and now runs her own company, said, “I’ve been very lucky that I had a chance to travel a lot and to attend several seminars abroad because of my English. When I was asked [to be a mentor], I didn’t think twice. I said, ‘OK.’” She said learning English will open opportunities for the students, just as it did for her.
Imano will work with Helen, a 15-year-old who wants to become a lawyer. They plan to have regular conversations, in English, about Helen’s everyday life at home and at school.
“I am smitten,” said Rosemarie Arens, about Flor, the 14-year-old student Arens will help during the next two years as Flor studies English in Lima, Peru.
Arens had not planned to become a mentor, but she agreed to fill in at the beginning, until a permanent volunteer could be found. After meeting Flor, Arens has decided to remain with the program.
“One of the first things [Flor] said,” Arens reported, “is that she would like to go to a place where there are lots of books to read.” Such a request is music to the ears of Arens, who is a former teacher. She already has given Flor a few books in Spanish to encourage this desire to read.
“There are lots of things I would love to be able to do with Flor,” Arens said. First on the list is a field trip with some of the other mentors and students -- a bus tour to visit historic landmarks within Lima, including archeological sites. The program encourages this sort of thing – a few hours a month of outings, talk or just hanging out.
For outings, mentors are encouraged to think of places a low-income person might not have visited. “Break socio-cultural barriers,” trainer Sheila Walker advised them. Walker is a cultural anthropologist on leave from Spelman College in Atlanta who has run several mentor-training workshops about the African diaspora in the Americas. This cultural knowledge will help the mentors “teach the kids their own stories, for their own self-esteem.”
In each of the seven countries, the program is being managed by U.S. Embassy staff. Typically, each embassy has chosen 25 students. (In Brazil, there will be only 10 students due to the higher expense of the English classes.)
The programs vary in other small ways from country to country. In most cases, English classes will be held in binational centers, but in Colombia and Nicaragua they will be at universities, to help students become comfortable with campus life.
Walker said the students need someone to talk to about career opportunities. “They all want to be doctors or engineers,” she said. “Mentors can show them that there are other things you can be – journalist, anthropologist, art historian – can give them a sense of their potential.”
Mentors from different Latin American countries have different levels of comfort with the mentorship arrangement. Some of the countries’ program administrators insist that mentor-student pairings be of the same sex and only meet at the binational center. But in Venezuela, Walker said, when the idea of meeting at the center was broached, one mentor’s reply echoed the group’s sentiment: “The student’s whole family will come to my house.”
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
