April 1, 2017
Boston College students and recent alums are taking on a challenge issued by Hannah Ames Beavers and Katie Carey Nivard to help promote global grassroots initiatives. For example, as “Global Advocates,” five Boston College graduates to date have raised just over $100,000 for schools in East Africa and Guatemala.
They include Katie Remy, a 2011 Carroll School marketing graduate who became the first Global Advocate from Boston College recruited by Beavers and Nivard (see main story). The others are Morgan DeLuce ’15, Tessa Peoples ’16, Marisa Maneri ’16, and Megan Sonier ’16 (all Morrissey College graduates). Still other Boston College students and graduates have supported the schools in other volunteer capacities: Ana Isabel Romero ’09; Peter S. Martin III ’11; Sarah Padial, Morrissey College ’16; and Elizabeth Holman, Morrissey College ’17.
Peoples, who majored in psychology and minored in Hispanic studies, has raised $19,000 so far for a school project under way in Panajachel, in the Guatemalan Highlands.
Through their global nonprofit organization Glorious, Beavers and Nivard became involved in the effort when Nivard identified Ingrid Villaseñor as having the potential to be “the next Alice.” That is, Alice Mathew, the inspiring founder of Tanzania’s Glorious Orphan Care. Villaseñor has more than 25 students in her school, El Árbol del Niño. With Glorious support, the school has purchased land for a sustainable farm to serve as a community ecotourism center, grow local produce, and provide garden plots for the schoolchildren’s families.
Peoples has been working for nonprofits in Guatemala since June of last year. She will leave this summer but plans to use her experience and Spanish-language skills to work with immigrant communities in the United States.
Her time in Guatemala confirmed the importance of “working in true partnership with the communities and listening to what they needed,” Peoples said. “Those projects make the biggest difference and endure the test of time.”
—Kimberly Blanton