When Delmy García was seven years old, she was told she had a bad heart. “I had to stay at the hospital for a week,” Delmy says. “I was very sad.” She always knew she was different—unable to run outside, out of breath after climbing a few stairs, constantly sitting on...
Layers of dust coat the cracked concrete floor of Chiquival Cooperative School’s dilapidated gymnasium. A makeshift stage at the front of the room is strewn with streamers and balloons. Students, teachers, and visitors dance together under the modest aluminum roof,...
Fernando Augusto Gonzalez thinks about his parents all of the time. He wonders where they are; he imagines what they might be doing in that particular moment. Maybe, just maybe, they’re thinking about him, too. Fernando lives with his grandparents in the impoverished,...
The second-grade classroom at Pachalí Primary School is humid. A fly buzzes from desk to desk, circling in wide, lazy arcs in an attempt to distract the students’ attention from the front of the room. But teacher Regina Cabjón is reading—and the students are too...
It’s easy to envision a 19-year-old who can hardly be pried away from technology. But you wouldn’t be taking this teenager away from games or internet chat rooms—you’d be interrupting his research on Microsoft Encarta. The Cooperative for Education (CoEd) Computer...
Ancelma Ortiz used to be like any ordinary girl in a poor, rural Guatemalan family. The oldest of five children, she labored in the fields alongside her father and sold the produce in the early morning market with her mother to help provide the basic necessities for...
