📌 Edition #24
📆 August 2022
🌎 Copán Ruinas, Honduras
📸 This month’s Snaps
👩🏻🎨 Painting Process of Artist-in-Residence Program 🎓 GAMA’s graduation ceremony 🌳 Planting trees in the new Campus 🌅 Camp Vida 🧮 Camp Ágape 💰 GAMA’s Financial Education Workshop 🐴 Staff Retreat in Dulce Nombre 🐔 Visiting GAMA participants hen shed
A lost cause❌
Today's vessel is Laura Franco, a visionary leader participating in our UPLAM Fellowship. She is staying busy experiencing UPH programs, learning about organizational leadership, and envisioning how she can combine all of this to realize her dream.
After the Fellowship Laura will return to Colombia and create similar initiatives with the knowledge obtained in Honduras, while also contextualizing the model to meet her community's needs. She has a tremendous vision, and we are encouraged to see her leadership on display at UPH. We were able to see this firsthand with how she supported a young boy named Genrri.
Genrri (pronounced Henry) is a 10-year-old participant at our After-School Program in Camp Ágape. Laura noticed that Genrri was having significant concentration problems, and that he didn’t have a proper base of reading and writing skills. With fifty to sixty children to attend to, Genrri’s teachers had already labeled him a lost cause.
Laura felt compassion for Genrri, and could tell others had tried to help him, but their efforts stopped short of what he really needed.
One day Laura was reading with Genrri and noticed something. He was able to read basic words like “mom” but he couldn’t decipher the letters by themselves. He squinted his eyes a lot, so Laura tried varying the distance of the book, holding it farther and closer, and asking him where he was able to read the best.
Laura was not the first to try to help Genrri, but she was perhaps the first to do so with such loving attention, depth of compassion, and willingness to take action. She approached her camp director with her hypothesis: Genrri might need glasses. Together they created a plan to learn more, starting with an appointment at the ophthalmologist for Genrri to have an eye exam.
Laura and the other staff have plenty on their plates, but their attention to detail would not let them skip over Genrri. They went the extra mile, rearranging their schedules, and putting in extra hours to look for a solution. It turns out that Laura’s hypothesis was correct. Although Genrri entered the eye clinic with hesitation (video attached below), you can see that he left joyful and optimistic (photos attached below).
Genrri literally didn’t see it coming, but improving his vision has transformed his life. Seeing how fast he has been learning lately, his teachers are now the ones who can’t believe their eyes. Genrri now walks into Camp Ágape every day with a new aura about him; greater self-confidence and a big smile—along with his cool new glass.
Genrri went from lost cause to shining star—all thanks to extra time and full dedication. Imagine the transformation Laura and our other fellows will bring to their communities as they not only replicate the UrbanPromise model, but do so from a position of compassionate curiosity.
As The Circus, your consistent support allows leaders like Laura to consistently invest in youth like Genrri, resulting in a reach far greater than you could imagine.
Bless you, friends.
