Top 40 Under 40: Sheny Rodriguez TheSpec.com - People - Top 40 Under 40: Sheny Rodriguez
A special feature celebrating 40 exceptional people under 40
Elisabeth Johns
The Hamilton Spectator
(Oct 17, 2008)
Sheny Rodriguez has lived in Hamilton for 18 years but can't stop thinking about her roots.
The 32-year-old hairdresser has spent the last year of her life organizing and fundraising for a middle school in her Guatemalan hometown of San Lucas.
As as a civil war raged on, she fled her native country in 1990 with her foster parents, Hamilton couple Kino and Alda Nardi, in hopes of returning one day to make a better life for her impoverished neighbours.
By the age of 14, she'd already experienced death: her father, killed in combat; two of her younger siblings, from chicken pox and bronchitis.
If there had been a better education system, perhaps her siblings would still be alive today, she said.
When she went back home in 1993, it was shocking to see how bad things had become: her younger brother was so malnourished, she could count his ribs and the vertebra along his spine.
Rodriguez created Cantabal Health and Education Projects last year to provide San Lucas children with educational resources.
With just $500, she was able to help five children go to school.
She's raised almost $10,000 towards building a school for Grades 7, 8 and 9 for more than 300 children as well as vocational training for community members.
That's one-fifth of the total -- $50,000 -- she needs to see her dream realized. With the money she's raised so far, she will be able to buy a plot of land to build the school on, she said. School is free in Guatemala up to Grade 6.
"Building this school is very important because it's ... to help the new generation learn about who we are, who the rest of the world is and what they mean to us," she said.
"This idea that started as an idea in my head has now become a dream of many."
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