Barrera dreams of helping those most in need

By Rachel Mangini

Senior Breana Barrera usually spends her summers working for her grandparents who have owned a Mexican bakery in her hometown of Santa Barbara, California, for more than 30 years.

This summer was a little bit different. Barrera took time off from managing bakers, customers, and the bakery accounting affairs to travel to the western highlands of Guatemala as an interpreter for the Latin America Children's Fund.

As a history/political science major, Barrera had dreams of becoming a United States senator, but recently her aspirations have changed, partially due to the classes she has taken with Dr. Helma de Vries-Jordan, whose enthusiasm Barrera calls “infectious.”

“I took Politics in the Developing World, and it showed me the difference in the way other countries are run,” she says. Barrera now feels that her ultimate goal -- helping people through public policy -- may be better accomplished if she works in the developing world. Instead of becoming a senator, she now aims to become a diplomat or ambassador.

Barrera's trip to the Huehuetenango region of western Guatemala was sponsored by the Latin American Children's Fund, which works in Guatemala in concert with another nonprofit focused on that country, the Seeds of Help Foundation Inc.

A friend and fellow Pitt-Bradford student, Noah Gasch, a broadcast communications major from York who planned to create a documentary based on the LACF trip to Guatemala, asked Barrera to join the group. It turned out to be the perfect opportunity for Barrera, who is fluent in Spanish, to put her studies into action and to explore her academic passions and career objectives more fully.

“I went in trying to see what struggles people were facing in Guatemala and how Seeds of Help Foundation was helping,” she says. She notes that she is familiar with some of the issues people in Mexico face daily and wanted to see how the situation was similar, or different in Guatemala.

“The post office was closed down for the whole week we were there,” she said. “There was a severe drought. The new mayor was not doing what he promised as quickly as he had promised, so we witnessed several protests.” For Barrera, it was helpful to witness firsthand what life is like in the developing nation.

She enjoyed working with Seeds of Help because the organization is involved in many aspects of the local community-from helping to supply schools with needed materials to helping students plant a vegetable garden that will grow in the highlands soil, which is difficult to use for anything other than potatoes.

Seeds of Help also assists with planning and constructing local infrastructure and organizes women's groups, composed mainly of the mothers of the school children they serve. These groups teach women how to prepare healthful meals and maintain sanitary conditions at home despite a lack of water.

“We heard so many stories, things you wouldn't believe,” Barrera said. She recounted a story about a student who received a scholarship for high school from Seeds of Help. Many students in the community she visited cannot afford to attend high school because they must pay tuition along with books and uniforms.

This scholarship recipient - on the day she was contacted about being awarded the scholarship -w as packing to head to Mexico where she would work to support her family. In Mexico, her life would have been bleak. She'd likely become a housemaid. “The most incredible thing,” says Barrera was “she was only going to be making about five dollars a week.”

Barrera cited de Vries-Jordan's courses as the impetus for much of her academic interests. Her courses have “opened my eyes,” she said, and made her realize that this sort of thing is happening all over the world.

Before she left for her trip this summer, Barrera received a book from de Vries-Jordan, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It was “about women and girls being trafficked for sex or money and how the political or social situations in many countries keep women from empowering themselves,” Barrera said. Reading it helped prepare her for what she would see in Guatemala.

One of the most important aspects of her experience in Guatemala was being “on the ground.”

“I don't want to be in an office,” she said of her future career goals. “I want to be helping to plant tomatoes or dig a cistern.”

However, she noted that jobs within the government, like a diplomatic position, would potentially offer her more power over policy decisions. She would like to find a balance and does not want to become disconnected from the people she is aiming to help.

Her time in graduate school - she plans to pursue a degree in international public affairs - will likely help her find a career that appeals to both her passion for public policy and her desire to be involved in local hands-on support.

Her final year at Pitt-Bradford will be a busy one. On top of finishing her coursework and applying to grad school, Barrera will be completing a capstone project regarding U.S. immigration policies relating to Mexicans-specifically human rights violations against Mexican women and children.

In the process of being deported, women and children are often held in detention centers for months. Conditions in these centers may be poor, with little access to food and water. Barrera plans to interview several California lawmakers because California has some of the most immigrant friendly laws. Her research paper will compare the status quo in her home state with that of a state with harsher immigration laws - like Alabama or Arizona.