SAN JUAN STUDENT BRINGS FAMILY TRADITION TO COLLEGE
The
Roberto Clemente Middle School in North Philadelphia is a world
away from Haverford where Yamile is a senior and thousands of
miles from her native Puerto Rico. But, every Saturday for the
past three years, the modern, three-story school has been her
home away from home.
In a classroom whose walls display the life and achievements
of the school's namesake, 21 eighth graders at the Clemente
School huddled in front of computer stations. Their teacher
was in the room, but guiding them through the Web was a group
of Haverford College students - among them, Yamile Marti-Haidar
- who had come to help the young learners with their reading
and math skills.
On one particular Saturday morning in December, the eighth graders
were learning how to navigate the Web to do research. They had
been reading about Anne Frank and were searching the Internet
for information on World War II. Their teacher, Claire Chappele,
appreciated the one-to-one tutoring, but was equally impressed
with the tutors’ loyalty and commitment to the weekly
project. “I’ve been involved with the program since
my second year of teaching here, and the Haverford students
and Yamile have come every Saturday, every year. As a result,
our students have been able to build relationships with them,”
said Chappele.
This relationship-building began three years ago, when Yamile,
then a first-year student at Haverford, was flying home to Puerto
Rico for the holidays. "I happened to be seated next to
the principal of the Roberto Clemente School,” she explained.
"She's from Puerto Rico too and was going home for vacation."
The principal talked about her plans and hopes for the school,
and Yamile expressed her interest in working with children.
"She gave me her phone number; I contacted her when I returned
to campus, and we put together this tutoring project,"
said Yamile. "I called it 'Amigos’, which means friends.”
By the start of Yamile's sophomore year, Amigos was well underway,
but the following fall semester she left to study overseas,
and the project languished. When she returned to Haverford in
the spring, she was determined to re-establish the program.
With the help of a friend, she eventually encouraged upwards
of 35 Haverford students to participate. "At times I worried
that we would be too busy with our studies or too tired from
a Friday night to make it to the tutoring sessions on Saturday
morning," said Yamile. "But, we knew this was a commitment
and, in fact, both groups of students have benefited from the
experience." According to Yamile, the Clemente School,
many of whose students are Latino, is known nationally as a
very good bilingual school. "It's been great for Haverford
students who are learning Spanish because they can practice
their language skills while working with the kids."
Yamile grew up in San Juan where
her parents, Jaime Marti and Magda Haidar de Marti still reside.
She and her older sister and brother, Magda Marie and Pedro
Jaime, learned the importance of helping others at a very early
age. “When we were very young, our parents took the three
of us to homeless shelters, especially around the holidays.
We would bring food with us and just spend quality time with
people from all walks of life,” she recalled.
Yamile particularly remembers their
visits to a shelter in the outskirts of San Juan. “It
was a place for children who had been abandoned or abused,”
she said. “ I met kids my age, who have had very different
opportunities in their lives from mine, and I learned a lot
from them.” Over the years Yamile and her family quietly
helped dozens of children and the elderly, and eventually formed
a foundation which supports, among other projects, a summer
camp as part of the non-profit organization, Centro Sor Isolina
Ferre in Caimito. Yamile believes that the success of the foundation
is based on the family’s continued personal involvement
in its operation.
It would appear that Yamile, now
in her final year of studies at Haverford, has continued her
family’s tradition. In addition to her work with Amigos,
she enthusiastically promotes voluntarism to the rest of the
Haverford student body through her position as chair of the
advisory committee for 8th Dimension, the campus office which
coordinates student volunteer activities. Since her first year
at Haverford, she has worked with and lent her support to other
students who have started or who are continuing various types
of student-generated volunteer projects, from distributing food
to the homeless to volunteering as “big brothers”
and “big sisters” for neighborhood children. The
director of 8th Dimension, Mary Louise Allen, is awed by Yamile’s
commitment and passion. “ She’s quite a remarkable
student,” says Allen. “She understands that when
you offer to help people, they are counting on you. And she
also recognizes that there’s as much benefit to the volunteer
as there is to the person being helped.”
Last spring, Yamile was awarded a
prestigious Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship which recognizes
talented minority students who are poised to do independent
research with a faculty mentor. The fellowship program is the
centerpiece of the Foundation's efforts to encourage members
of minority groups to pursue graduate studies and create diversity
in academia.
In Yamile’s case, the fellowship
supported a research project, which took her back to San Juan
and the Caimito community where she knew many of the people
through the Foundation’s summer camp. “I wanted
to study how to empower an underprivileged community such as
Caimito,” said Yamile. She did so by going into the various
barrios and sectors of the community talking to people individually.
She also met with heads of various community and governmental
agencies that oversee land redevelopment and provide social
services in that part of San Juan. By the end of the summer,
she had developed an extensive profile of the needs and services
in the Caimito community both from the government’s perspective
and that of the people who live there. Alice Lesnick, who teaches
education courses at Haverford, served as Yamile’s mentor.
“ Her work on this project
has been quite extraordinary,” says Lesnick. “This
research has been completely apart from her course load. She’s
demonstrated enormous initiative; she’s been a very patient,
tireless and sensitive researcher in trying to understand and
reconcile the gaps between what she learned from governmental
agencies and from the people in Caimito.”
On the last Saturday tutoring session
for the semester at Clemente, Yamile anxiously thought about
a graduate school interview she had later that afternoon in
Philadelphia. She wants to pursue a master’s degree in
social work with a law degree and return to Puerto Rico to help
her fellow citizens. “I would love to go back and try
to implement what I learn,” said Yamile.
As the departing Clemente students
exchanged hugs and farewells with their Haverford tutors, Yamile
handed each of them a colorful bag of holiday candy, leaving
several behind for the children who couldn’t attend that
day. “That’s just like her,” said Chappele
afterwards. “She knew the kids who couldn’t make
it would have been disappointed, so she brought enough candy
for all of them. They’ve come to count on her. She’s
their friend.”
