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Stephanie Valencia
Stephanie Valencia has cleaned people’s teeth and made dentures, but she isn’t a dentist. She has awakened at 4:00 a.m. to bake bread, but she isn’t a baker. What she is, is an advocate for the impoverished, and a believer in the ability of small gestures to make a big difference. Studying abroad during her junior year in El Salvador, she spent three days a week in classes, and three in a community cooperative, working as a baker, dental assistant, and seamstress. The year before, she experienced rural El Salvador during a spring break trip; the Boston College group visited a one-room schoolhouse, where children—dressed in the best clothes they had—waved tiny American and Salvadoran flags. It was a moment she “realized she would never forget—her life would never be the same,” says Daniel Ponsetto, director of the Volunteer and Service Learning Center, who was with her on that day. Valencia has since led a Campus Ministry trip to Nicaragua and spent her junior year studying in El Salvador and Mexico. Influenced by her father, a lobbyist and politician, Valencia ultimately believes government is the path to change. This summer, she was a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Fellow on Capitol Hill, gaining hands-on public policy experience at the national level. Valencia grew up in a highly assimilated Mexican-American family in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 30 minutes from Juarez, Mexico. Her family spoke English at home, and because they were in New Mexico before it was part of the United States, her grandmother would tell her, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Coming to Boston College was a shock. She was in the minority for the first time. “The food was different, the colors were different, the lifestyle was different,” she says. She found friends, support, and reminders of home through the student club the Organization of Latin American Affairs. Valencia, an international studies major, also found her niche through the University’s abundant choice of service programs and international trips. A member of the Emerging Leader Program and the Shaw Leadership Program, she fulfilled a community service requirement by creating a program called Lentes Para Gente, meaning “Eyeglasses for the People.” Valencia collected used eyeglasses, which she eventually took or sent to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and El Salvador. Valencia received the University’s Archbishop Oscar A. Romero Scholarship in 2003, awarded to a student who embodies the slain Salvadoran’s dedication to the poor. “I think what animates Stephanie are these encounters with a tremendous amount of injustice,” Ponsetto says. “And the fact that she believes in what the Jesuits speak of: developing faith that seeks justice in the world.” Photo: Stephanie Valencia on O'Neill Plaza. |
