Rotary Project Creates Instant, Intergenerational, Lasting Impact in the Campo

​by Robin Loving

​Imagine: You are a campo girl of 10 – 12 who knows nothing about your body’s operation. Your house has a dirt floor, no windows or doors, no running water, no electricity, no gas. You have to work several days a week instead of going to school, and then that time of the month comes when you can’t do even those things because you have no supplies to manage your body’s functions.
 
In comes Rotary Club of San Miguel Midday with its Girls’ Empowerment Program with its Ninas Sabias (Wise Girls) curriculum. When you are at school one-week, Mexican female teachers come in and through song, dance, and ritual, teach you about your body and its importance to the world. At first, you don’t have the confidence to meet their eyes and say your name. By Friday, you are joyously celebrating your womanhood, and you have a reusable kit of supplies to keep you at work and at school.
 
Rotary began thinking about this project in May 2021. By January of 2022, the community need and concept was shared with all members and a team was formed to research resources. By the summer of 2022, Rotary was paying for local women to become trained and certified as Ninias Sabias teachers. In early January 2023, Rotary had a contract with the Secretary of Education of the State of Guanajuato to begin. Two weeks later, teachers were in schools during the school day for a week of transformative education.
 
Immediately, the boys wanted in on whatever this mysterious, private class was. By spring of 2023, Rotary had developed a SEG-approved curriculum for a boys’ program in the schools. It will teach the boys about their puberty as well as respect for the girls’ transformations. It will stress responsibility, accountability, and goal-setting in personal, family, and community contexts.
 
Both programs focus on the importance of education and staying in school to help them break the cycle of generational poverty.
 
Empowering women and children is one of Rotary’s seven areas of focus. Rotary here applied to Rotary International Foundation to fund this program and received a global grant of $91,000 USD to train 2,000+ girls over a year. Because this program is so popular with local volunteers, this money will go farther, for there now are some volunteer drivers who make their ways over unpaved, rutty, rocky roads to take the teachers back and forth each day.
 
The plan is to return to these same 168 communities every two years to ensure that more children who are coming of age have this essential, life-changing education. As well, a future phase will bring this program to urban schools, as well.
 
If you would like to volunteer to participate in this impactful community project, contact Andrea Spessard at alspessard@gmail.com. 

---