Houston Grassroots Contributes to Better Education Plan

Maria Carbajal recalls growing up in an impoverished neighbourhood of Mexico City and becoming convinced at a very early age that a good education was crucial to success in life.

In fact, she was so persuaded that at five years old she began washing dishes for a neighbour and helping out in a home-based tortilla factory just so she could earn money to go to school.

“I saw the difference between us and the people who have a career, so I thought I’d better go to college, to school, to have a better future,” Carbajal tells Axiom News.

Immigrating to the Gulfton neighbourhood of Houston, Texas, about 15 years ago, Carbajal is now working on completing her education for a career, ideally in the medical field.

While it’s proving to be a bit of a slow journey, Carbajal says she’s committed to seeing her goals through, “even it takes me till I’m 50,” she says with a laugh.

The future of education in the Houston neighbourhoods of Gulfton and Sharpstown is a big priority these days.

A major non-profit, Neighbourhood Centers Inc., which works with more than 236,000 people annually, has been awarded a federal grant, called Promise Neighbourhood, to make plans over a one-year period for strengthening the local education system.

The organization is continuing with its now six-year commitment to Appreciative Inquiry and its tenets of building on strengths and whole-system engagement, to develop a large portion of the plan.

In February, Neighbourhood Centers invited community members for an initial visioning session, with the goal of creating grassroots groups that will drive changes they would like to see in local education.

The organization is also compiling a database of information on the local education system.

In addition to two charter schools, four public schools have also agreed to partner in the initiative, says Neighbourhood Centers director of community development Oriana Garcia, noting she’s heard this hasn’t necessarily been the case in the communities of all Promise Neighbourhood recipients.

“We have no holdback from our (public) school district. They really have come to this table and they’re willing to have discussion about sharing data, and talking about ways to improve the education of the kids that we’re serving,” says Garcia.

Carbajal, who was one of the participants in the initial visioning session, says she found it most exciting to actually have a voice and contribute to building the local education platform.

“We were dreaming, and we saw our community in 20 years, and the most exciting thing (for me) is . . . to have the chance to be part of (the change),” she says.

She heard a similar message from another parent, who after the visioning session said she had never felt so valued, both as a person and for her input.

A key activity of the session was for attendees to share stories of their most captivating education experiences, and what they felt was key to the success of those experiences. As those stories were shared in groups, theme words were pulled out, with each group selecting three top words or phrases they felt best described the crucial pillars of a strong education.

The words were scribed on a quilt, a symbolic testament to the group’s promise for building their community’s education platform.

Plans are now underway to form action groups around each of the themes.

“The point of those (action groups) is to get families involved, and to get families to really own up to something that they really feel strong about and let them take the lead on those projects,” says Garcia, noting Neighbourhood Centers will provide support to the teams.

For Carbajal, raising awareness amongst her fellow parents about the importance of involvement in the education of their children, including their involvement in this Promise Neighbourhood initiative, is where she’d like to focus her attention.

A key strategy she’ll be using is to talk one to one with parents about their hopes and dreams for their own lives, and that of their children’s. She’ll use that discussion as a launching point to talk about how direct involvement in their children’s education can help make those dreams a reality, she says.

Related Stories:

Strengths-Based Community Development Inspires Gulfton Residents to Contribute

Houston Non-Profit Heads for New Heights, Using Appreciative Inquiry

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