Luis Navarro, 12
Name: Luis Alfredo Navarro
Birthday: 27 June 2001
Grade: 2
Home life: Luis lives in a one room home with his 5 siblings (including Esperanza, Wanda, and Estiven) and grandmother
Favorite school subject: Math
Likes to do for fun: play soccer
What he wants to be in the future: a police man
Where he would like to travel if he could travel anywhere in the world: USA
What would he wish for if he could have one wish: to have a good job
Short Story about Luis: November 2013
18 year old German volunteer Leonie Hohnholz runs a literacy program with volunteer Inga Plum in tangent with our regular English program. Leonie and Inga are working hard so that no child is forgotten – at Education Plus, we believe that every child, not just the top performers, has equal potential and deserves an equal amount of attention.
One of Leonie’s students is a 12 year old boy named Luis. Luis lives with his grandmother and 5 siblings in a one room home without floors, windows, or a functioning door. His mother disappeared five years ago during a work trip to Costa Rica, after which his father abandoned the family. His grandmother, toLuis’s embarrassment, constantly refers to him as slow in front of the other children. However, he has had several impediments to learning which are not his fault. Luis is behind other children his age because was taken out of school for a few years in order to harvest coffee to support his siblings. His cousins give him a hard time about studying to read instead of playing with them in the streets because it’s just not cool. But Luis, with the support of Leonie, has surprised us all! Leonie tells us:
“Yesterday I was working with Luis and, because he didn’t show up for reading class for a long time, I thought we would have to repeat again, but we actually made a very big progress. When we first started he didn’t even know letters. But he actually remembered this time and after an hour of working with him, at the end he could actually start to read! We started with syllables and then we finished he was reading real words. I was so happy about it and he was very happy too! When I told him that he really made progress he was very proud, and you could see it on his face. The next day I told him I wanted to take a picture of him reading and put it on the internet to show everyone because I was so proud of his progress, and he was so happy! You could really see it in his smile.”
Leonie and Luis reading together
Luis studying hard at Edu+ with his fellow “Tigers”
