Success Stories Mavis
Mavis' story also appears in the April 2008 Mayatan Bilingual School Newsletter
Mavis is a smart and sassy sixteen-year-old. Self-possessed, mature and confident she is a true credit to Mayatan and her family.
Mavis has been with Mayatan since its early days, starting in Kinder Grade when classes were taught in the small schoolhouse opposite the Mayan Archaeological Site. Mavis knows she has benefited enormously from the scholarship place awarded by Mayatan Foundation and we are extremely pleased to see how well she is doing and what a super young lady she has turned out to be.
Mavis’ parents have always done their best for their two girls although things have not been easy. Mavis’s dad is a shoe-maker, while Mavis’s mom Ana works in a local store. Mavis’s sister is eleven and attends the local public school; Mavis helps her with her studies whenever she can. These days however, big sister is away from home a lot living in the neighboring town of Santa Rosa where she is about to start her second year at ICEC - a college specializing in Computers and Technology. Sponsors introduced to Mavis through Mayatan’s Sponsorship Program have been able to continue assisting her and for this Mavis and her family are extremely grateful.
During her ninth and final year at Mayatan, Mavis was offered a weekend job working for a local tour-operator in Copán Ruinas. (www.basecamp.com). Basecamp caters for adventure-hungry international tourists and is run by a business-savvy Belgian. Knowing just how important it would be to have a local, fluent English-speaker on board, the owner was quick to employ Mavis, who went on to work full time for this thriving company when she graduated rom Mayatan. It was here Mavis recognized her desire to work in the tourist industry - promoting her country’s beautiful natural resources and fascinating heritage.
After graduating from technical college, she hopes to combine work and further education to study a tourism-related degree at university. An impossible dream for Mavis without the opportunities provided by Mayatan’s Sponsorship Program.
In the meantime, Mavis’s new vacation job at a very fancy jade and jewelry store in Copán Ruinas is keeping her busy and her English up to par. She has received many compliments on her language skills and clearly enjoys her work.
We are proud to have helped empower this determined young lady. She would like to thank everyone who helped her along the way, especially her 9th Grade English teacher Miss Deborah. Mavis’s advice for other students is to “keep trying and don’t give up...even when things seem impossible they can come true”. Mayatan is pleased to have played our part in helping Mavis’s academic dreams come true and we wish her every success in the future. We’ll keep you posted!
Visit the ‘Support Us’ page to learn how to invest in the futures of Mayatan students and help us to create even more success stories!
