Nov 4, 2012 / 13:04 pm
When Marin Catholic High School President Tim Navone and principal Chris Valdez were mulling how to exercise the school's mission – "faith, knowledge, service" – abroad, internationally, their best and brightest idea and connection to another culture was just down the hall at the Kentfield school.
It was Mario Pacheco, the owner of the custodial company that has cleaned Marin Catholic for 16 years. He's a beloved member of the school's community who lifted himself out of poverty in the village of El Carmen, El Salvador, and today is its unofficial mayor, if 3,000 miles away in Marin County. If there's a dispute in El Carmen, his cellphone rings.
Navone knew the story of El Carmen well. For years he has been giving Pacheco used clothing and other goods that he delivers during his visits home several times a year. It's a place mired in poverty, but the people are rich in spirit and spirituality, and it would be in El Carmen that the Marin Catholic students would carry out the mission.
In the project's first year, a group of Marin Catholic students, all of them fairly advanced in Spanish, raised money to pay for the high school tuition and other school expenses of two young girls, Jenny and Julissa. They attended grade school at El Carmen School and since January, thanks to the fundraising, have been enrolled at a Catholic high school, Colegio Santa Isabel, in the nearby city of Cojutepeque. It is an opportunity they very likely would not have otherwise had and, with a degree, it will put them on a course for a better life.