Global Impact
Copán Ruina, Honduras
Spring 2011 · Comment ·
Lo Daniels ’05 understands the power of education to transform lives. Last year the interdisciplinary studies graduate began teaching first grade at the Mayatan Bilingual School (MBS)in the western highlands town of Copán Ruina, Honduras. Using foreign teachers to teach in English and Honduran teachers to teach in Spanish, MBS offers preschool through “colegio” classes to about 300 children. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, and these English-language skills offer important advantages. “Without Mayatan, many of our students would attend underfunded, overcrowded schools,” Daniels says. “Even with MBS, some students struggle to balance family priorities—such as farm labor and the pressure to marry early—with the less immediate rewards of education.” Indeed, nationwide only about 25 percent of Honduran students finish high school. “Our goal is to keep expanding our capacity so that more and more children can benefit from the untold—and too often unthinkable—privilege of a world-class education.”
