How Rotary made Jose’s high school graduation possible

By Martha Peak Helman

Rotary members often say that the work we do will change the lives of people we will never have the chance to meet. But nothing could be further from the truth in Jose’s case.

My Rotarian husband and I first met Jose when he was a gawky teen enrolled at Safe Passage, a program that makes it possible for children who live on the Guatemala City garbage dump to go to school and improve their lives. Through Rotary Foundation grants and Rotary involvement, Safe Passage has grown in the past decade into an organization that supports more than 500 children each year, in preschool through high school and beyond.

Even before Safe Passage offered him a way forward, Jose had had several years of schooling. But his education was sporadic. His family could only afford one school uniform and one set of school fees, so Jose and his three brothers had to take turns. As a result, when we met him, Jose was 19 and in the equivalent of sixth grade. We were already sponsoring Jose’s younger brother, Juan Carlos, who had skipped ahead to seventh grade. But when we met Jose and realized that he deserved the chance to reach his ambitions as well, we decided to sponsor both boys.