At age 17, John Castillo uprooted his life in El Salvador to follow his dream of obtaining higher education. “I had a dream to come to the U.S. to study in college in another language and to learn in a new culture,” he said. His family was already established in Washington, DC, and so in… Read more »
Patricia first came to the U.S. from Brazil eight years ago with her husband. For the first six years in the country, she mostly stayed home with her two children. She had to rely on her husband to translate for her at her children’s medical appointments and at the grocery store. Then one day Patricia’s… Read more »
Zoila America Guardado came to the U.S. from her native El Salvador in early 2004. She moved here on her own and spoke very little English when she first arrived. She said, “You feel scared in a new culture especially when you don’t understand the language.” Soon after settling in, America got involved in an… Read more »
Lilo Gonzalez is a musician and songwriter based in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood in Washington, DC. He came to the US from El Salvador in the 1980s as a refugee of the civil war. Looking to improve his son’s quality of life, he started working as soon as he arrived. “I got here on a… Read more »
As a teenager the education of Salvadoran native Vilma Granados was disrupted by the brutal civil war raging in her country in the 1980s. After warring factions shut down the school in her town, Vilma came to the U.S. to study and to work. When she first arrived in 1984, she spoke no English. That… Read more »
Carlos Rosario School student Juan Carlos Miranda, a Honduran native, grew up between the homes of different family members. When his studies suffered from all the moving, Juan Carlos eventually quit having only completed up to 3rd grade. At age 21 Juan Carlos came to the U.S. to join his brother in search of a… Read more »
In 2007 Pactole Alison – a native of Madagascar, a small island country off the southeast coast of Africa -moved to the U.S. to be with his wife, who he met during her Peace Corps volunteer service in the country. Those first couple of months in Washington, D.C. were very challenging. “When you don’t understand… Read more »
In 2006 Cuban native Jacqueline Castro-Lopez and her husband decided to come to the U.S. in search of a better life for their kids: a two-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. Jacqueline said, “I wanted my kids to be more free.” When Jacqueline first arrived and enrolled her daughter in school, she struggled to understand… Read more »
When Daniela Moreira moved to the U.S. from her native Argentina, it was her dream to study culinary arts and to one day be an executive chef. Daniela enrolled in the culinary arts program at the Carlos Rosario School in 2011 and graduated in the summer of 2012 after a highly successful year. At the… Read more »