April 2025
Dear Friends and Sponsors,
Spring has sprung! We hope this letter finds you well and that wherever you live, you are enjoying some good weather. As always, the students are busy with their classes. Summer will provide them with a break from school. The vast majority of them will return to their rural communities to help their parents with farming and household responsibilities before returning to school in the fall.
We thought you might find it interesting to get a glimpse of a typical day in the life of a Yashalum student. The following letter was written by one of the high school girls who lives at Casa Santa Maria.
~ ~ ~
My name is Keña María López Álvaro, and I am happy to write to you about Casa Santa María, a dormitory where young women from different communities and municipalities live. Some live very far from their homes and stay at the Casa for long periods of time.
At the Casa, my daily routine is governed by a set of rules that includes various learning activities that contributes to my academic development and responsibilities at the dorm. One of these activities is preparing breakfast. Another girl and I work together. We get up at 4:00 a.m. and take turns frying rice, heating tortillas, and preparing coffee. (This is our typical breakfast before heading off to school.) At 5:30 a.m., we serve breakfast to the rest of the girls . Afterwards, we clean the kitchen by sweeping, mopping and taking out the trash. We leave the area clean to avoid contamination and the spread of disease, and so that the cook or manager will find everything clean when they arrive. I also make sure that I bathe and get my things ready before going off to school.
After school, I return to the dorm around 2:30 p.m. (The schedule varies depending on classes.) Upon arrival, lunch is ready, as Casa Santa María has a cook who prepares our lunch and dinner. After eating, I spend some time working in the garden where we cultivate different crops such as radishes, hibiscus, leeks, cilantro, beans, corn, plantains and more. All of the food is for our consumption, and the work helps me expand my academic knowledge. I dedicate about two hours to this activity a day, as do all of the girls who live here. When I finish, I return to my room to bathe, and then I have a limited amount of time to listen to music or watch videos before starting my homework and studying for my classes.
Casa Santa María also offers me a great benefit for my studies by providing internet access and a computer lab. At the dorm, I actively participate in all the cultural activities and patron saint festivals that we organize. Workshops are also offered that benefit my academic development in such subjects as human development, culture, religion, addiction prevention, crime prevention, ethics and morals and more.
I am grateful to Yashalum for the support it provides me, so that I am able to continue my studies. I am thankful for the space it provides and for the guidance of the people who work at Casa Santa María.
A bit different than the lives of typical U.S. high school students! Like her classmates, Kena takes her work seriously and appreciates the support Yashalum (you!) provides. Of course, like other young people her age, she also enjoys listening to music and playing video games!
As Keña gratefully expresses, we too are appreciative of your continued support that makes possible things like dormitories, computer labs, workshops, etc., that make education possible and enrich the lives of these young people.
In gratitude,
