By: Kathy Adams
Empowerment International has been working in Nicaragua since 2005. True to our mission, we continue to see the majority of our children we serve grow into empowered young adults who, in turn, serve their communities. One of the things that makes our program unique is the individual attention the students receive, year after year, helping them find and navigate their own unique educational path.
Jenssy began her journey with EI in the fourth grade when she came in looking for tutoring assistance. She, and her family, were qualified for enrollment in the full program which includes a parental involvement component via parent workshops and home visits. Her parents realized that education was the only way for their daughter to have a different future. They note proudly that from a young age, Jenssy was fascinated by math and science and would spend her play time making perfumes from flower petals and creams.
“I find the process of transforming raw materials into chemicals that are useful in everyday life fascinating”. - Jenssy
Over the past two years, Covid has offered a myriad of challenges to students in Nicaragua such as Jenssy. Yet this has not deterred her from completing her final two years of high school. With extremely limited resources at home, Jenssy was a faithful attendee at school and the EI tutoring sessions. She went above and beyond requirements to watch hundreds of educational videos in order to prepare herself for her future in engineering. This effort has paid off.
This week Jenssy is graduating from high school. She has high hopes of getting into one of the top engineering colleges in 2022.
This is an exciting time for her and her supporters at EI. She has a lot of dreams ahead of her. Once she obtains her degree, she plans to create her own line of household consumer products and employ people from her community to make them. While this alone is an ambitious undertaking, she doesn’t stop there. She also aspires to start a school for entrepreneurial mothers who wish to get ahead, and educate them on how to use and sell her products.
Jenssy’s educational journey with EI began with tutoring assistance and now, 8 years later, she is dreaming of empowering her community through meaningful employment opportunities. She is breaking the cycle of poverty and positioning herself to become a changemaker in her own community!
Since starting this cause, I have full heartedly believed that the best social investment that can be made is education. While the final results take quite a bit of time and patience, each year we see more and more of our students such as Jenssy accomplishing their dreams and impacting their communities.
With your support, we can continue to empower students like Jenssy to break the cycle of generational poverty and become changemakers for their community. We still have to raise $45,000 by December 31st.
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