Written by: Jesse Lin

She looks the same as when I met her three years ago in the college dining hall. Rebecca wears the same khaki cargo pants and chocolate brown fleece with her bag made from light-wash Levi’s jeans. Her sarcastic humor and wit haven’t changed and she’s still incredibly unconventional, or as she puts it, “I’m quirky.” 

But she admits that, “everything has changed,” since we first met freshman year when I first agreed to help launch her social impact venture, Project Olas. The company idea was simple: women from Guatemala City’s Zone 3 would teach Spanish to English speakers through WhatsApp video calls. The students would learn Spanish more effectively than in a traditional classroom, and the women could earn a stable income outside the reach of Zone 3’s dangerous informal economy.  

Heavy gang violence, high poverty rates, and a lack of basic educational, administrative, and water infrastructure classify Zone 3 as a “red zone.” Its economy centers around the Guatemala City garbage dump. Many of the area’s residents are ethnic Mayans who did not speak Spanish as their first language. Still, they fled the countryside during the Guatemalan Civil War that raged between 1960 and 1996 to find work in the Spanish-speaking capital. When they could not find jobs in the formal economy, they settled near the 40-acre dump site, searching the garbage for salvageable items to sell.

Rebecca was particularly familiar with the community early in her life. Her home state of Maine is home to Safe Passage, one of the largest non-profit organizations doing work in Zone 3, where the organization is registered under the name Camino Seguro. Their aim focuses on children’s education to break the cycle of poverty in Zone 3.

The mothers of these children, however, face especially daunting obstacles to overcome poverty. 

According to the women Rebecca works with, the garbage dump itself is run by a mafia, creating a controlled economy within this semi-formalized space. Outside buyers who try to undercut the mafia are shaken down and threatened. If women wish to work elsewhere, it is often in prostitution or at a bodega where women break glass in the sun for hours, earning the equivalent of five dollars.

At home, these women may find themselves in abusive relationships, says Rebecca. The lack of legal protections available to indigenous women in particular makes this problem all the more serious in Zone 3. As a result, very few women have economic autonomy. Often, if they make money, their husbands take it. Mothers, especially, have extra challenges in the workforce. Women living in these red zones with mouths to feed are some of the most discriminated against when it comes to looking for a job in the formal economy. 

For Rebecca, it was a personal imperative for Project Olas to focus on these women. 

Her mother died from cancer when Rebecca was very young, leaving behind Rebecca, her dad, and brother. When Rebecca went to study abroad in Spain as a high schooler, she met her host mother who became a mother figure in Rebecca’s life and resolved to make Rebecca’s experience in Spain as meaningful as possible. 

“My relationship with my host mother changed my life, so it seemed like a logical step to work with women based on what I knew.”

Running Project Olas, however, proved to require a lot more than just knowledge. Making Project Olas’ simple mission work felt like it required every ounce of her being, eventually taking priority over college. As soon as the coronavirus pandemic started to wane, Rebecca took a leave of absence from her classes, taking what little savings she had to buy a plane ticket to Guatemala, and lived and worked in the community alongside these women for eight months.

Prior to those eight months, I saw the toll running the organization took on Rebecca. She admitted to feeling anxious to the point where every waking moment was consumed by thoughts of how to keep Project Olas up and running. And though I was technically an employee, we were friends first. But it felt like she was growing distant beyond even her usual bad texting habits. Privately, I worried if I would ever see her again. 

I saw her same quirky self again in my last year at college, after those eight long months. 

“Actually being there changed me so much.” When looking at the amount of trauma and broken systems in a community like Zone 3, meaning and value often lie outside of seeking economic opportunity, Rebecca says. In her eyes, “religious foundation is so key to meaning and service in a community like that, and really one of the only explanations for the will to survive.” And while she wasn’t born into a religious family, faith has since become a strong pillar in Rebecca’s once-turbulent life. Her Bible is now a normal everyday carry in her light-wash Levi’s bag. 

She is now one of the few religious people I know, and her faith has changed the way she perceives Project Olas’ mission. 

“At the beginning, I had a mindset of ‘People need money’, whereas now it’s like, ‘This money is never going to be enough to fix the many problems that exist in the community and are at the roots of it. But it can be a symbol that says, ‘You matter. Someone is interested in your experiences, your unique perspective, your future, your children,’ because that’s just universally, deeply valuable and maybe more life-changing than a change in income.” 

But her faith also encourages her to continue her old vision for the organization. Since the beginning of Project Olas, Rebecca says, she imagined it being run by the mothers of Zone 3. Sindy, a mother in the community, has already taken over the company reins from Rebecca. 

When I asked what she dreams of doing after Project Olas, I could not have imagined her describing an ideal life homesteading in the Guatemalan countryside with her fiancé and motley crew of kids. I’m sure when we first met four years ago she couldn’t have imagined that, down the road, she would want to teach language arts in a Guatemalan high school either. 

Of course, some things don’t change. Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Asturias were always authors whom Rebecca loved. It’s just that now, they will be featured prominently on the reading list for her future Guatemalan students.