2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
Alum leaves Providence union to teach ESL in Guatemala
Susana Aho
Issue date: 4/24/07 Section: Metro
Madeleine Andersen '06.5 took time off during her junior year to travel to Guatemala for the first time and realized something - though "it was such a gift to be at Brown, to be reading all the time," she felt like she "was always reading these beautiful things and never doing them."
In a few months, she'll be going back - this time for two-and-a-half years, to start an English-language instruction program at a school run by a women's cooperative outside of Guatemala City.
Andersen said her decision to work in the school stems from something her father always told her: "Leave your campsite cleaner than you found it."
That advice has taken her from Brown to working for a local labor union to her upcoming project in Guatemala. She said it has made her realize that "my work didn't have to have any classification other than 'will produce some kind of social good.' "
Andersen, who currently holds a position with Service Employees International Union Local 615 in Providence, said she fell into labor union work - "very luckily fell into it." Last fall, she helped the Student Labor Alliance and SEIU fight during contract negotiations for Dining Services workers during her last semester at Brown. She took a job at SEIU in January, which she said has "felt really right" as a "way to leave the campsite cleaner."
In Guatemala, Madeleine said she found another way to leave the campsite cleaner: Unidas Para Vivir Mejor, or United To Live Better, a group of women "affecting change in a beautiful, progressive, whole-hearted way," she said.
UPAVIM was founded by women in a poor neighborhood outside Guatemala City. The women formed a cooperative to sell handcrafts and now have a distributor in the United States and a "pretty good international market," Andersen said.
The women, many of whom formed the group after being widowed during the Guatemalan civil war, are "kind of subsidizing the community," Andersen said - they've set up a health clinic, a dental clinic and a Montessori school for children up to age 12, where Andersen worked when she took time off from Brown.
In a few months, she'll be going back - this time for two-and-a-half years, to start an English-language instruction program at a school run by a women's cooperative outside of Guatemala City.
Andersen said her decision to work in the school stems from something her father always told her: "Leave your campsite cleaner than you found it."
That advice has taken her from Brown to working for a local labor union to her upcoming project in Guatemala. She said it has made her realize that "my work didn't have to have any classification other than 'will produce some kind of social good.' "
Andersen, who currently holds a position with Service Employees International Union Local 615 in Providence, said she fell into labor union work - "very luckily fell into it." Last fall, she helped the Student Labor Alliance and SEIU fight during contract negotiations for Dining Services workers during her last semester at Brown. She took a job at SEIU in January, which she said has "felt really right" as a "way to leave the campsite cleaner."
In Guatemala, Madeleine said she found another way to leave the campsite cleaner: Unidas Para Vivir Mejor, or United To Live Better, a group of women "affecting change in a beautiful, progressive, whole-hearted way," she said.
UPAVIM was founded by women in a poor neighborhood outside Guatemala City. The women formed a cooperative to sell handcrafts and now have a distributor in the United States and a "pretty good international market," Andersen said.
The women, many of whom formed the group after being widowed during the Guatemalan civil war, are "kind of subsidizing the community," Andersen said - they've set up a health clinic, a dental clinic and a Montessori school for children up to age 12, where Andersen worked when she took time off from Brown.