"As a child I only attended school for two years. Back then the thought was, "Why send a girl to school when she only is going to wind up in the kitchen?" When I was 25 years old the Catholic Nuns came to my village and taught me the value of being a woman. The priest told us that men and women are equal. He said the only ones who say women aren't equal to men are men. The priest built the Colegio Asuncion here in Huitan so that the indigenous people here (the Mams) would be educated. All of my 10 children attended that school and 9 of them went on to become teachers. Now, I go to school every afternoon. My daughter-in-law, who is the director of the elementary school here, teaches a class for older women like me who didn't have the opportunity to go to school when we were young." - Dona Juana Diaz Velasquez lives in El Plan, Huitan, Guatemala and has been a community leader for many decades.
Angie Harris
"I think the reason I've worked with international and refugee populations is partly because I am gay, and understood what it was like to live on the edges of society. In Peace Corps and afterward I was an ESL teacher and helped refugees build confidence by teaching them English so they could be heard and understood." - Angie Harris is the Director of International Programs at The Dollywood Foundation.