PAUTA invited me to give a presentation to children and parents of children they work with in Mexico City and as well as children in Chiapas, one of their rural project sites. PAUTA is based in, and works out of, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).
(My connection to the organization is a former teacher of UWCAD, Janet, who had worked for them and who I had the pleasure of reconnecting with in Cuarnavaca after 25 years!)
PAUTA runs programs mostly to help improve the quality of education in under-funded and under-resourced public schools in Mexico and assist children from low socio-economic backgrounds achieve academic and personal success. One of the areas of their focus is science education!
And of course, I agreed! My audience consisted of 50 or so children and their parents in an auditorium in UNAM and about 20 young girls in Chiapas via Skype.
The children in the auditorium belonged to lower-middle and lower class Mexican families, many of whom had traveled for considerable amount of time to be there. Those in Chiapas came from very poor rural indigenous families and many of them, I was told, are gifted and talented girls! The children in Chiapas had come to the city to listen to my talk and to attend a workshop also having traveled long distances — 5 to 8 hours! PAUTA supports the education of many of those girls through scholarships since otherwise they wouldn’t be able to continue with their education.
In other words, they could have been children attending schools COMMITTED works with in Kathmandu valley or in Thangpalkot.
Here’s what I shared with them with hopes of inspiring them to continue to strive to achieve their dreams, with hopes of them taking some lessons from my own life story, my own life story of beating the odds.
Maybe you’ll get something out of it too! Enjoy.
