Why Guatemala? Why me? Why CoEd?
In a past life, I was a newspaper reporter at The Cincinnati Enquirer. There, I was a careers columnist for a time, and my weekly series, life@work, featured people who loved their work, which is how I met Joe and Jeff Berninger, the two brothers who co-founded CoEd back in 1996. Their story is an amazing one, but it's one that I've already told. Read it here.
This blog fast-forwards 13 years from the conception of CoEd. It's about what happened after those ambitious and altruistic young men left corporate America for a lifelong mission of breaking the cycle of poverty in Guatemala through education.
That's no easy feat, but thankfully the Berningers were born into a can-do family. Their own parents were teachers turned hobby farmers who dreamt of a sustainable life on their own patch of paradise in southeastern Indiana. The family's land became the first cut-your-own Christmas tree farms in the Cincinnati tristate area more than 20 years ago. Christmas trees paid for their educations and instilled in all three Berninger boys that anything can be done, if you put your mind to it.
Still, their calling presents more than its share of challenges. Guatemala, a country about the size of Ohio, has the second lowest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere, behind Haiti.
In this country of 14.5 million, a stark dichotomy is omnipresent: volcano-ringed lakes, lush green jungle, and breathtaking mountain views hide the prevalent poverty, illiteracy and lack of opportunities for the majority of Guatemalans. Outside of the capital, most women have two years of education; men have just three.
CoEd offered a glimpse into Guatemalan life and culture. Rather than pity or fear, I left with an overwhelming sense of love and compassion that has stayed with me. The statistics in Guatemala tell one story; I hope to tell another.
I think of the never-ending hugs from the children at the schools we visited, the thick blankets of fragrant pine needles spread for us at each school, and the generous hand-made gifts the students and their parents brought us. A great number of nonprofits operating in developing nations fall into the "give a man a fish" genre; CoEd, with its sustainable textbook, computer lab and literacy programs, is in the much smaller, "teach a man to fish" category.
Please join me as I record this amazing story, about my trip with CoEd, the natural beauty of Guatemala and more importantly, the people, both American and Guatemalan, who helped to make the journey one worth retelling.
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