By Cameron Graham Vivanco
Not many women on the mission field have made their social debut. I bring this up only to say that you never know where God is going to take you or what is going to become of your life when you hand it back over to God. You may think that you are headed in a particular direction, but then, well, it changes!
Handing life over to God for me has meant that a native North Carolinian has lived in South America for 18 years, and that my children do not eat grits (insert a heavy sigh). It has meant that I have been witness to the whole spectrum, from appreciated privilege to the beauty and pain of those living in extreme poverty. As a cradle Episcopalian, it has meant that I have seen the richness of our tradition in two languages on three continents, and have seen God moving in all sorts of churches and denominations with or without prayer books. It has been a wonderful and challenging ride!
I grew up in the Diocese of NC (a quick hello to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill), and then served in the Diocese of Upper SC (here’s looking at you, Church of the Advent in Spartanburg) as a youth minister for five years. It was there that God started calling me into full-time mission work, or to become a missionary. I did not like that word growing up, nor did I understand it. It is another example of God’s humor as this is the work to which He has called me.
I came to Latin America in 2002 for what I thought was going to be a two-year stint, and here I am today. As I started work on the mission field, I came across children and teenagers alike who were not in school due to the lack of money. I became friends with students who were on the streets because they couldn’t afford a school uniform or the school supply list. My roommate at the time here in Ecuador and I decided to support one young girl we knew who wasn’t in school; her name is Laura. She was 15 years old but in third grade. Her mom, a mother of nine children, did not have the $22 a month that Laura needed to enroll in school. So by pledging $11 each, we willingly and happily got her back in school.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the decision to help Laura get back into school was the start of a 501c3 called Education = Hope (E=H). E=H is a micro-scholarship/micro-sponsorship program that exists to provide for the education of those living in desperate and difficult situations. Those situations include things like poverty, young women coming out of prostitution, human trafficking and young men who formerly lived on the streets, as well as job loss, orphaned students and situations of the like. When most people hear “scholarship” they think of hundreds or thousands of dollars a semester. Our average award is $19/month! That is all it takes to help keep a student in school in Ecuador.
Today E=H has grown and helps to educate 2,300 students in five countries: Ecuador, Haiti, Costa Rica, Kenya and Rwanda. God used that small investment of $22 a month in 2003 to change my life, Laura’s life and now thousands of young people’s lives.
One of the things I have learned over the years since starting E=H is the value of prevention. While we do support the education of those who have lived through traumas, for example the young women coming out of prostitution and young men coming off the streets, the majority of our effort is focused through local churches on the prevention of those traumas happening in the first place. I have learned that the key to that prevention is through helping facilitate an education. By keeping a student in school with E=H, it keeps him or her nestled in the support system of a church and in the support system of a school.
Through God’s grace, we are able to help protect students who are vulnerable to gangs, drug addiction, violence and human trafficking, because someone is tracking with them. Someone in their church knows them as a person and knows their reality. And we are also a part of giving them a bright future because they understand themselves and the world better. All through the simple blessing of education!
I, we, have been at this for 17 years now and have seen students from homes with no running water graduate as valedictorians of their class. We have seen students turn from being the most disruptive students in school to the example of best behavior. We have seen students whose future seemed to be locked into the cycle of poverty break that cycle for themselves and their families. And all thanks to a tiny amount of money, and the value and love that is imparted with it.
We would love to share more about Education=Hope with you.
Would you consider supporting a student, or inviting your ECW chapter to support one?
To learn more about this work that God has called us to, please visit educationequalshope.org, or call 704.309.5597 to talk to our one and only Stateside employee staff member, Celeste Bundy, for more information. You can also come visit Ecuador and see what we do firsthand; we host vision teams that come and meet the students whose lives are being transformed through education. We even have a program that connects schools in the U.S. to schools and students around the world called One School. One Hope. oneschoolonehope.org
Help us spread the word and pour into students’ lives. You never know where God will take them or the impact they will have on our world!
Cameron Graham Vivanco is the cofounder of Education Equals Hope (E=H), a micro-scholarship program that exists to provide for the education of those in desperate and difficult situations (educationequalshope.org).
She has been in full-time lay ministry since 1995, focusing on the voids that come with poverty, especially in the areas of education and leadership development. E=H started in Quito, Ecuador, where Cameron and her husband and three children serve as SAMS missionaries. She is a graduate of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and holds a certificate in youth ministry from the Institute for Professional Youth Ministry. Cameron’s passion for her work comes from a desire to live out her faith so that students know that Jesus makes life better and makes us better at life.