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Portrait of Maria Fernandez

Honor Society® member

Maria Fernandez

Intern at Center of Human Rights and International Justice

  • Boston College
  • Sociology
  • Class of 2018
  • Brookline, Massachusetts

Member since May 2016

About

I was born and raised in Guatemala City and moved to the U.S in January 2015. Growing up in a society divided by ethnicities, language, access to opportunities and huge socio-economic inequality raised my interest for social problems. Since I can remember I wanted to devote myself to research in order to bring social change for people that are living under unjust situations. I started college in Guatemala as an Anthropology major in the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. At the end of the first year, me and my family were forced to leave my county for security reasons. I am part of of the 2% of Guatemalan population that has access to higher education and I feel like I owe to my community to give back in order for more people to have access to the opportunities I’ve had.

Education

  • Boston College

    Sociology

    2015 – 2018

Goals and interests

Career goal

As a proud Guatemalan I definitely want to go back to my country and work for profound social change through education. I would like to make an extent research on the way education is approached in Guatemala, specially with the multilingual and budget adversities that it faces. Based on the results I would like to help design an educational reform that could be applied to other counties with similar characteristics.

Graduate school interests

After I finished high school I decided to take a year off and give a little back from all of the good things I’ve received. I decided to go to a boarding school for girls with low resources in northern Guatemala. In this year I discovered the huge gaps that public education has in Guatemala as long as other Latin-American countries. Since then my interest in education system in multicultural, multilingual contexts in areas of low resources has highly incised. I would love to go to grad school and specialize in education systems and how technology can help to bring access to quality education in impoverished areas.

Experience

  • Intern

    Center of Human Rights and International Justice

    Sep 2015 – Sep 2016

  • Server

    La Carreta (LA), Legal Sea Foods (MA), Barcelona Wine Bar (MA)

    Jan 2015 – Jul 2016

Volunteering

  • Teacher

    Centro Educativo Maya Asunción

    Jan 2013 – Oct 2013

  • Coordinadora de Diagnostico Comunitario/ Coordinadora de Comunidad

    Techo Guatemala

    Mar 2011 – Dec 2014

Languages

  • Spanish Advanced