Awesome San Leandro Woman Needs Your Vote

Katia Gomez is a 24-year old San Leandro native, educated at St. Leander Elementary School and Moreau Catholic High School. In recent years she has won two awards totaling $25,000 from the Rotary Club of San Leandro, $10,000 to build schools in Honduras and another $15,000 for an academic scholarship.

Now Gomez is a contestant for a $100,000 Do Something Award that would further her efforts to expand a non-profit group Educate2Envision that is already building high schools in three remote communities in Honduras.

Her Rotary supporters are behind her.

"Help us get the word out to everyone you know to vote for Katia and don’t forget to vote for her as well," the Rotary Club's Kenneth Pon wrote in an email.

Here is some background in an email from Katia:

About a year ago I founded my own 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Educate2Envision International, focusing on universal education, specifically in our pilot project in rural Honduras.

This work began after I returned from a volunteer Spring Break trip in 2010. That trip inspired me to attempt to devise a solution for the extremely low graduation rates in one Honduran community and the unsettling fact that no educational opportunities exist beyond 6th grade. Until now that is.

I returned home and rented every book it the library I could find on how to start a nonprofit. I spent my summer teaching myself the ins and outs of the legal process and in July 2011 was granted 501(c)3 status.

Since then I have traveled to Honduras several times to oversee our projects. In January 2012 we held the opening classes for the first high school to ever exist in this community of Los Pajarillos. It is one of the poorest communities within the region surrounding the capital. It has no electricity and only recently got regular running water.

It is very common for girls to marry and bear children right around 14 years old, even if they were one of the few driven enough to complete primary school, because there was no reason to be motivated to achieve anything else.

But now we are expecting to see the rewards of our new high school program pay off tenfold as early pregnancy rates (therefore medical complications) decrease, the overall literacy of the community expands, and a new outlet is created for people with untapped potential.

We have worked with the Honduran Secretary of Education to construct a new schoolhouse/library that will allow hundreds more children the chance to obtain an education and access books for the first time. 

Locally we also have designed cultural exchange programs with nearby elementary schools to provide pen pal letters and lecture on achieving universal education in developing countries. I have been working with St. Leander this past year and have seen incredible energy and excitement on behalf of the young students to want to help their peers abroad become educated as well . . .

. . . online voting has begun for the Do Something Awards. Voting won't be the sole deciding factor in who wins the grand prize but it will definitely play a big role. So please let everyone in the club know that they can vote. And please spread the word.

Vote for Katia Gomez. And share this with your friends.