Meet Tati Torres: A Student Studying with Nuestro Ahora's New University-Prep Program, "El Caminito"

Tati came to Nuestro Ahora in April in order to study with the university prep program, “El Caminito.” Each week she travels from her home in a small town in San Vicente to the scholarship house in Antiguo Cuscatlan where she spends the weekends with other students in the Program. They have the opportunity to experience the life of the Nuestro Ahora students, participating in activities and volunteering with the students in the Program who are already studying university. Generally, all the students share dinner together on Friday nights and the students participating in “El Caminito,” like Tati, go to study on Saturdays at the UCA, where they receive tutoring and review classes in math and language. At the end of the year, Tati and the other students in the university prep program will work to win a full scholarship with Nuestro Ahora, allowing them the chance to continue with their university studies. To help Tati, and the other students, please click here.

Photo: Tati (left) and Celsa, participants in "El Caminito"

My name is Gilma Tatiana Torres Alvarado. I live in the small town of Amatitán Abajo San Esteban Catarina in the department of San Vicente, El Salvador.

I would like to study math because I really like it, and also because by studying I would be able to improve myself and become someone professional in the future. I would be able to help my family and others with what I would learn. In my free time, I like to listen to music and play soccer.

I have three siblings. I’m the youngest. My siblings have grown up with just our mother who has fought to see us grow up and has worked to give us the most necessary things since we were little.

I was born in Tegulcigalpa, Honduras. I’m 18 now. Because of the civil war, my family had to leave El Salvador and go to a refugee camp in Honduras called “San Jose.” After the war, my family was able to return again to El Salvador and we lived in a small town called Gualcho. There was an organization there that was helping people by giving them small lots of land where they could build a place to live. Thanks to that organization my family found a place to live in the town of Amatitan Abajo.

I studied from first to ninth grade at the school in Amatitan Abajo. I had to walk half an hour each way to get to my classes everyday. I studied high school in San Esteban Cararina. I would leave my home at 6am in order to get to class on time because I had to walk an hour and a half and later take the bus another half hour. I was able to study thanks to a scholarship that I was given and the help of a parish priest. In that way, I was able to study. My mother didn’t have the economic resources to be able to help me study.

Before, my mother worked cleaning homes in order to earn money to buy the basic things we needed. My siblings and I would stay with our grandmother, and she actually worked in agriculture. My siblings and I helped her with the harvest and farmwork so that we could find a way to live.