The Northern Triangle countries of Latin America are some of the most violent in the world. El Salvador and Honduras have ranked among the highest murder rates for years. It’s not only the gang violence we hear most about, but also domestic abuse and gender-based violence. And the trauma it leaves behind has a devastating effect on entire communities, from the hospital staff who treat victims to police officers patrolling the streets—and especially on children and their ability to learn.
Celina de Sola spent a career in humanitarian aid work before returning to her hometown of San Salvador in 2007 to look for a way to protect children from violence. With her husband, Ken Baker, and brother Diego, she started with a single volunteer-led after-school club for kids in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Today, Glasswing International equips schools, hospitals, and police forces with the knowledge and training to overcome the debilitating effects of violence-induced trauma. To date, Glasswing has reached more than 2 million children and adults in nine countries across Latin America—as well as in New York City. And it’s partnering with national governments to further scale up a “trauma-informed ecosystem” that not only improves students’ academic performance and resilience, but also creates a restorative antidote to help break the cycle of violence. This episode tells Glasswing’s story, including:
- the terrifying day-to-day life in gang-controlled neighborhoods
- how Celina’s childhood and humanitarian work led to Glasswing
- how school clubs provide a safe, caring environment to help children heal…
- …and the positive results on their academic performance and behavior
- the neuroscience of trauma—and how its impacts can be reversed
- healing the mental health wounds of hospital staff and police forces
- how Glasswing is helping public institutions reshape the services they provide
Additional Resources:
Source articles for this episode include:
- A ranking of the most dangerous countries of the world—and what that means
- Preventing Violence in the Most Violent Contexts – an impact evaluation of Glasswing’s Community School program by the World Bank
- Sanando Heridas (Healing Wounds) Program Evaluation, including qualitative evidence from the hospital training program, by the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank
A full transcript of the episode is below.
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Emanuel 00:13
I come from a family that was involved with gangs. So you could say that my future was already decided. Since I was a kid I was surrounded by weapons and drugs. That was normal for me.
Jonathan Levine 00:30
This is Emanuel. He grew up in Guatemala, mostly hanging out on the streets with his older sister.
Emanuel 00:37
On the corner, you could see me with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, maybe talking with a gang member. People would back away when they saw me.
Jonathan Levine 00:49
When he was 17, Emanuel was offered a chance to volunteer for an organization called Glasswing that ran after-school clubs for children. He signed up.
Emanuel 01:02
It never entered my mind that I could do something different. When there was an opportunity to volunteer, to influence young people, it was like a magic fountain. Teachers and families and children were giving me more and more trust and affection. I understood that maybe this was what I was born to do. To help others.
Jonathan Levine 01:25
He begged his sister to volunteer with him, but she had two babies and needed money. When the local gang invited both of them to join, she said yes, Emanuel said no. Then one day he was headed to school.
Emanuel 01:42
I left my room and rounded the corner. And I saw a man on a cell phone. He just stared at me. And then he said, "run to your sister's house, run to your sister's house." I ran there with all my might. And when I got there, the door was open. I saw my sister's body with 12 bullet holes in it. When I saw her covered in blood, my whole body began to tremble. I think I was in shock because I could not speak. No words would come. I never knew why they did that to her.
Jonathan Levine 02:45
He could have retaliated. In his old life that would have been the obvious choice.
Emanuel 02:53
I believe that I would have sought revenge or, I don't know. Maybe I would have been the one killed like that first. Now I just don't want to imagine what would have happened to me, if I hadn't changed the path I was on.
Jonathan Levine 03:06
Emanuel credits Glasswing for the choice he made.
Emanuel 03:11
The opportunity to help those kids gave me a different perspective and a commitment to change their lives so that they don't fall into the same abyss that I fell into for such a long time. And that my sister got lost in.
Jonathan Levine 03:33
From the Stanford Social Innovation Review at Stanford University, this is Uncharted Ground--stories about the people at the forefront of global development and their journeys in social innovation. I'm Jonathan Levine. Today's episode is about an organization that ventured into places no one else would, and found a way to do something no one thought possible. Glasswing International gives communities ravaged by violence tools to understand and heal from the impacts of trauma. The El Salvador-based nonprofit has mobilized over 100,000 volunteers, like Emanuel, and trained frontline workers across Central America and Mexico, reaching more than 2 million children and adults. Celina de Sola, Glasswing's co-founder, says people in these places, where violence is endemic, urgently need help.
Celina de Sola 04:32
If we don't address the root causes of violence, we are losing a generation of young people.
Jonathan Levine 04:39
Celina says this has to change. And it can.
Celina de Sola 04:43
Kids in these communities aren't born wanting to inflict violence or be victimized, or they're not born with these characteristics. And by addressing mental health, we can interrupt these intergenerational cycles, we can interrupt the violence we're seeing in so many communities, particularly in the Northern Triangle--El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras--but also in the region and frankly, in so many communities in the world.
Jonathan Levine 05:10
Here's our reporter Kathleen Schalch with a look at how Glasswing is striving to break the cycle of violence. And just a note here: In some cases, we're only using first names to protect identities, and we're not identifying any children.
Kathleen Schalch 05:27
Here are a few statistics. Last year, El Salvador had the highest murder rate of any country in the world. Honduras had the second highest. Celina de Sola says it's not just gang violence. There's also domestic abuse and gender-based violence...
Celina de Sola 05:48
...and the highest rates of child homicide and femicide. In El Salvador in 2018, one woman fell victim to femicide every 24 hours. Latin America is home to 8% of the world's population but 37% of its homicides. Aside from that, over a third of Latin Americans reported being a victim of violent crime in 2016 alone.
Elubia 06:12
It's sad, but living in fear becomes the norm.
Kathleen Schalch 06:20
Elubia works as a program coordinator for Glasswing in Guatemala.
Elubia 06:28
Day to day, life is unpredictable. You never know when you will hear a shot or multiple shots. You don't know where they will come from. When you go out, you think that something will always happen. And if you hear a strange sound in a neighborhood or on the streets, you think, "my son, my daughter." Everyone thinks something could happen to their children.
Kathleen Schalch 06:52
And violence and trauma perpetuate themselves, by changing the way people think and behave. Exposure to trauma increases the likelihood that people will become victims or perpetrators in the future. It can undermine their ability to form relationships, to trust, to control their temper, and to think rationally. It becomes harder for adults to focus on their jobs and for kids to pay attention in class.
Celina de Sola 07:18
When you're exposed to trauma, it does affect your ability to learn because you're trying to survive. Your brain's stress response basically shuts down functions, like your critical thinking, and it makes it hard to learn.
Kathleen Schalch 07:32
And populations facing the most stress and trauma often have nowhere to turn for help. Practically no trained professionals or mental health services to explain what has happened to them or what they can do about it.
Celina de Sola 07:45
Just to give you a sense: In the US there are about 270 mental health professionals for every 100,000 people. In Honduras, there are only two. So the lack of mental health professionals is extreme in these contexts. What we need to do is equip individuals, communities and society at large. So we can have a better frontline of mental health support, because that's going to be the only way we can really interrupt these cycles of violence, of victimization and perpetration.
Kathleen Schalch 08:13
The idea is to train people in schools, hospitals, police departments and other organizations, so they understand the impacts of trauma and its lasting effects on human biology, emotions and behavior. That way they can take better care of themselves and others.
Kathleen Schalch 08:34
Celina de Sola, her husband Ken Baker, and her brother Diego formed Glasswing in 2007. They named it after a butterfly.
Celina de Sola 08:44
And it's a butterfly that's endemic--it exists from Mexico down to Colombia. So it's in the region of Latin America where we work.
Kathleen Schalch 08:53
Butterflies symbolize metamorphosis.
Celina de Sola 08:55
We believe in that power transformation. We also liked the fact that it had transparent wings. For us, accountability and transparency are really important. And this species also is able to carry up to 40 times its weight. It's this tiny creature that has incredible strength.
Kathleen Schalch 09:13
They were also inspired by the butterfly effect--the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings can set off forces that can unleash a storm an ocean away.
Celina de Sola 09:23
You know, an action taken in one moment, even if it's perceived to be a very small action, can have a huge impact in the future elsewhere.
Kathleen Schalch 09:35
Celina can trace some of the ideas behind Glasswing to the whisperings of her own conscience as a little girl. Her family moved to the US from El Salvador in the early 1980s during the civil war there, but they returned every summer to her grandmother's house. And Celina was stunned by the poverty and suffering she saw.
Celina de Sola 09:55
And it seemed unfair to me, right? So arbitrary. So even though I didn't have the words for social justice or equity, it did kind of just make me feel guilty, right?
Kathleen Schalch 10:05
Her parents told her that what she was witnessing was unfair and wrong. But instead of feeling guilty, she should figure out what she could do about it. And she did. She began volunteering, starting in middle school, and later went to work for an organization called America Cares. It chartered planes and sent humanitarian aid to people caught in brutal conflicts and natural disasters. Celina went to Darfur, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chad, Haiti, and other places. In a few years, she became the organization's Director of Emergency Response. In 2004, Celina flew to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, after a tsunami killed more than 200,000 people. Humanitarian organizations were rushing in water, food, tents, and medical supplies. A young local man who was hired to help them sat with her one night showing her old photographs. And suddenly he began laughing uncontrollably. An interpreter tried to explain.
Celina de Sola 11:06
He was basically telling me that he had lost everybody in his family, that he left for the market and when he came back, all that was left was the foundation of his house.
Kathleen Schalch 11:15
Aid agencies had brought in medicine and staff to treat psychiatric problems. But Celina didn't feel that met the needs of a whole population contending with unimaginable loss. She left that job. She already had a master's degree in social work. She went back and earned a second one in public health.
Celina de Sola 11:33
I actually wrote my thesis on mental health and complex emergencies. That was really something that I started to obsess over.
Kathleen Schalch 11:43
Celina was also interested in returning to El Salvador, where she had witnessed so much hardship as a child. She and her husband, Ken, moved to San Salvador in 2006, and started thinking about ways to protect children from violence. One idea was simply to give them something to do. In El Salvador kids attend public school for just four or five hours a day in the morning or the afternoon. There were no public recreation programs or soccer fields or other organized activities--nothing for kids to do but hang out in the streets. So one day Celina and Ken literally walked into a school and asked if they could volunteer to run after-school programs. That school had a reputation for being dangerous. People avoided the street it was on because it was the boundary between neighborhoods controlled by rival gangs. When Celina and Ken showed up, everyone was puzzled, including the kids.
Celina de Sola 12:48
They didn't understand. They were like, why, what? Why? Why are you doing this? Who are you?
Kathleen Schalch 12:53
But soon so many kids were coming to after-school clubs that Celina and Ken needed more volunteers to run them. That's when they founded Glasswing. At first, they envisioned it as a kind of volunteer clearinghouse, a place where people who wanted assignments could find them.
Celina de Sola 13:10
That didn't really pan out. Volunteering wasn't a huge part of the culture at the time.
Kathleen Schalch 13:15
So they decided to approach companies and ask groups of employees to come for just a day to help with things like school beautification projects.
Celina de Sola 13:25
They go volunteer, they show up at the school, they're like, "What else can we do here?" And you're like, oh, actually, we can fix the bathrooms more, we can replace this roof. And you can also do mentoring, or you can also fund after-school programs. So once you got them engaged in this one very sporadic moment, then you were able to hook them in.
Kathleen Schalch 13:46
Volunteers found they liked working with the kids. And even in neighborhoods known for crime or violence, Glasswing was able to keep volunteers safe. Maritza Trejo is Glasswing's Regional Education and Youth Director.
Maritza Trejo 14:02
We provide them with a t-shirt that has a really bright green color, so that they can be identified hundreds of meters away when you see that color. Whoever sees that volunteer with that t-shirt, you know that they're a classroom volunteer, so they never get stopped by a gang member.
Kathleen Schalch 14:19
Maritza has worked to transform neighborhood schools into what Glasswing calls Community Schools, with after-school clubs for both children and teenagers. She says the first year she concentrates on building trust. She starts by having the students take her on a tour.
Maritza Trejo 14:35
And I go basically store by store talking to anyone that I see on the street and talking about Glasswing, and that we're going to be here in the school--that we provide after-school programs for students. And eventually that information will get also into the ears of the gang members, you know. And they respect a lot of our work because a lot of the gang members don't want their kids to follow their steps. Our Community Schools Program has been working for more than 10 years in these schools, and we've never had an incident.
Kathleen Schalch 15:10
Here are some of the things kids like about the clubs:
Children 15:16
Doing arts and crafts...Doing experiments...I can kind of read now!
Kathleen Schalch 15:24
But there's a larger mission, Maritza says.
Maritza Trejo 15:27
Even though yes, we do want kids to learn English, we do want them to learn a sport or learn how to do some science experiments. That's sort of the excuse of how we bring them into our programs. But the main goal is we want them to experience a sense of belonging, you know, because that's the same sense of belonging that a lot of the youth feel attracted to gangs, because they feel part of a family, they feel that someone has their back.
Kathleen Schalch 15:57
She says these kids live with a lot of uncertainty. They don't know when or if a parent will come home, or if there will be food in the house. Some live with violence and abuse. So the idea was to provide them with something they could rely on--a safe place and a caring adult who would show up every week and believe in them and try to help them. Kids say having these adult mentors matters a lot.
Children 16:27
I feel she's part of my family...an idol...a role model. When we have problems, she helps us recognize that not everything is bad...She's been like my second mother...She's always been there for me, saying "you have so much potential!"...I needed somebody like her in my life. She came and rescued me...I went back to school because of her support.
Kathleen Schalch 17:01
Studies have shown that for traumatized children, especially having a mentor, an adult they can count on, can be a life-changing intervention. Celina says a caring adult who believes in you can make you see yourself in a whole new way.
Celina de Sola 17:16
That's what can help you make decisions, because all of a sudden, you're not a bad person, you're not a badly behaved kid, you're behaving that way because of something. And if I know that is the case, then I can also acquire the skills to manage the impacts of trauma.
Kathleen Schalch 17:36
Glasswing's Community Schools Program did not start out explicitly focused on treating trauma. But that, in effect, is what they were doing.
Celina de Sola 17:46
We would take mental health actions without necessarily calling it that. We realized that the more we did that, the better outcomes we were having overall.
Kathleen Schalch 17:55
Including some outcomes that nobody anticipated.
Celina de Sola 17:59
We started noticing that the safer they felt--which they did with the volunteers, we started seeing that kids in after-school programs started improving in math, science and reading and all these academic outcomes that we weren't even looking at originally.
Kathleen Schalch 18:12
Academic studies, including randomized controlled trials, confirmed what the schools were observing. Pablo Egaña del Sol is an economist and professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile, and co-author of an impact evaluation of the Community Schools Program published by the World Bank. He says the findings were impressive.
Pablo Egaña del Sol 18:33
For example, the program reduced bad behavior by 10%, which is a lot.
Kathleen Schalch 18:38
Absenteeism fell by 23%. And Pablo says this is really important, because in that region, kids missing school--showing up for maybe a couple of days a week--is a huge problem. Often they stop understanding the lessons and drop out. He says it's not just bad for individual students, it holds back whole economies. Students who attended clubs also got better grades.
Pablo Egaña del Sol 19:03
We find improvement in the student grades, which is also a significant result. So they are staying more in school, they are behaving less violent. And also they are improving their grades, which gives a lot of hope.
Kathleen Schalch 19:18
The researchers wanted to understand what was going on in these kids' heads, literally. They attached them to portable encephalograms to monitor electrical activity in their brains.
Pablo Egaña del Sol 19:29
What we did was we showed pictures, like positive or negative pictures, and we measured the physiological response.
Kathleen Schalch 19:38
They found that kids participating in the Community Schools Program reacted differently with less violent emotions. They were able to exercise what the literature calls self-regulation. Exposure to trauma can take away this ability because it can prompt some parts of the brain to become hyperactive and others to shut down.
Dionne Delgado 19:58
The parts that get shut down is a part we all love--like the part that regulates your emotion gets shut down, the part that regulates language gets shut down, reasoning, critical thinking, memory. All of those parts that you need for learning and also for relationships or even communicating.
Kathleen Schalch 20:18
And that changes the way you see and respond to everything around you, says Dionne Delgado. She's a social worker and an expert on trauma, who helped start a violence prevention program in Philadelphia called Healing Hurt People. Glasswing drew on her expertise to help trauma victims in Central America.
Dionne Delgado 20:36
Your brain now just works very differently. And because you're dysregulated, you sometimes can't figure out whether or not something is a threat or not. So you react as if everything is a threat.
Kathleen Schalch 20:47
There is a reason these impacts can be long lasting. Trauma rewires the brain.
Vivian Khedari 20:54
Every single thought, every single memory--it exists physically, like it's in there.
Kathleen Schalch 20:59
Vivian Khedari is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma. She works for an organization called Beyond Conflict and helps Glasswing develop lessons on brain physiology. She says stress and trauma exercise the amygdala, the most primitive part of the brain, which activates the fight or flight response to protect us from danger. Trauma redirects neural pathways toward the amygdala and away from the brain's frontal lobe, the part in charge of critical reasoning. Vivian likens these neural pathways to footpaths through a forest. The more often hikers tread on a path, the smoother and more beckoning it becomes. A less-traveled path gets harder and harder to recognize or navigate, until people forget it's even there. But this process can be reversed.
Vivian Khedari 21:47
It's something called neurogenesis--constantly making new connections. And we make them where we need them.
Kathleen Schalch 21:54
If people learn to trust and feel safer, pathways to the frontal lobe light up more often and the amygdala calms down. Just learning how stress is affecting you physically and mentally, and then practicing some simple exercises like breathing, can start the healing process. Vivian says telling someone facing a crisis to take a deep breath might sound silly, but it actually works. It activates your body's parasympathetic nervous system, which acts like a brake on a car.
Vivian Khedari 22:26
Slowing down your breathing slows down your heart rate, activates your parasympathetic nervous system, allows your body to enter a state in which you actually may be more effective in your decision-making. And this is why we're saying take a deep breath.
Kathleen Schalch 22:44
Glasswing uses this neuroscience to develop curricula and to train staff and volunteers. It experiments with a variety of interventions and adopts the ones that seem to work best. Just getting kids to sit in a circle and talk about their worries and wishes seems to help. So volunteers at Community Schools now start club meetings with guided discussions. Some also do mindfulness exercises with the kids.
Mindfulness Instructor 23:14
Rest your hands on the desk or in your lap. Close your eyes. Feel the ground under your feet.
Kathleen Schalch 23:21
Glasswing's Community Schools Program has now benefited more than 110,000 kids and expanded from El Salvador to Honduras and Guatemala. Glasswing has branched out to serve the mental health needs of adults as well. Again, Celina de Sola.
Celina de Sola 23:38
When you think about who the population interacts with, you can't just focus on kids in schools, right? They also interface with the health system and you also interface with law enforcement. These are really the three actors that are probably the most important.
Kathleen Schalch 23:53
In 2014 Glasswing launched its Sanando Heridas--or Healing Wounds Program. It works in hospitals teaching doctors, nurses and aides about the impacts of trauma, so they can take better care of their patients and themselves. Natalia Salcedo helped organize the program and now serves as Glasswing's Country Director for El Salvador. She says life for healthcare workers can be stressful because of low pay, inadequate supplies and long hours. But also because some of the patients like gang members are upsetting to be around.
Natalia Salcedo 24:33
They'd probably be handcuffed to the bed, kind of abandoned there until they have to go to treat them. Definitely no face-to-face conversation. Just go in, heal the wound, and kind of get him out the door.
Kathleen Schalch 24:46
And yet she says the moment when someone is gravely injured and needs medical help can present a unique opportunity.
Natalia Salcedo 24:55
It's a moment where they realize "if I want to continue living, I don't want to continue with the life I am living at this moment," you know. It's kind of like that critical point where you can decide to change your life.
Kathleen Schalch 25:15
To make this possible, health care workers need to understand how their own traumatic experiences are affecting them. They attend group sessions like this one.
Sanando Heridas Instructor 25:24
The reaction is physical. The reaction is emotional. The reaction is cognitive.
Kathleen Schalch 25:38
This can make it easier to calm down and concentrate on caring for patients. The program also seeks to build empathy. Natalia recalls a group session where a young man described being abused and drawn into a life he deeply regretted. A nurse was sitting in that circle.
Natalia Salcedo 25:56
So she was very much, like, numb when we started--very blank face, not showing any emotion. And then when this young guy was, like, sharing his experience and how horrible it had been, and how where he ended up was really not where he wanted to be, you could see the transformation in the nurse's face. Like she started kind of tears rolling down her eyes, kind of realizing "Oh my God, I am just becoming one other person in this kid's life who is taking him down the wrong path, because I am not showing compassion. I am not showing that I care.”
Kathleen Schalch 26:34
The Sanando Heridas Program trains everyone caring for patients to recognize and treat trauma. They're taught to make eye contact, start conversations and explain what symptoms to look for. They also provide referrals for follow-up care, including emotional or legal support. According to a World Bank study, patients in hospitals participating in the program were 58% more likely to be referred to mental health specialists, and those victimized by violence were 30% less likely to be victimized again. One possible explanation is that trauma awareness helped them recognize and avoid danger without panicking, getting angry or going numb with fear.
Kathleen Schalch 27:24
Like health care workers, police in Central American countries live with a lot of stress.
Teresa 27:32
We leave the precinct to investigate complaints. We don't know if we're going to return dead or alive, you know?
Kathleen Schalch 27:39
The Sanando Heridas Program is now training police officers like Teresa, a member of El Salvador's national civil police.
Teresa 27:48
My responsibilities range from taking complaints to patrolling operations. As time passes, stress and work overload, as well as our responsibilities take a toll on us. We stop taking care of ourselves, of our mental health. There are times when we are at each other's throats. But that is part of the stress we feel. Today I'm trained as a trauma interventionist, and it fills me with great pride and satisfaction.
Kathleen Schalch 28:22
Police really benefit from understanding the feelings they experience on the job, according to Dionne Delgado, who helped Glasswing set up the Sanando Heridas Program. In a situation where things are escalating, the training can help them calm each other down.
Dionne Delgado 28:37
So it reduced isolation, it reduced stigma, it reduced shame, right? And it created this community where people were now okay with asking for help.
Kathleen Schalch 28:49
And Teresa, the police officer and trauma interventionist, says the public benefits too.
Teresa 28:55
The Sanando Heridas Program shows us that before we face problems on the street, we need to make sure we are okay. By getting rid of negative energy we can provide better service to the population. Using a relaxation technique before heading out helps me to be calmer and less distracted. Because a police officer cannot be distracted. Today, we provide service that is more dignified, more humane, more just and less aggressive. We worry about the needs of others, about doing our job better. And all this is due to us taking care of our own mental health.
Kathleen Schalch 29:38
Glasswing's ability to help police departments, hospitals and schools has caught the attention of influential foundations and corporate donors. Celina de Sola says they, along with government agencies, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, are providing the funding Glasswing needs to expand its programs
Celina de Sola 29:59
We're set to grow, probably in the next year, almost double the size of the organization.
Kathleen Schalch 30:06
Glasswing has about 300 employees and many more volunteers. But its influence extends beyond what it can accomplish in the hospitals, schools and precincts where it works. It's partnering with education and health ministries to share its methods and curricula, so government employees can replicate them on their own. The goal is to reinvent the way public institutions treat the people they serve.
Celina de Sola 30:30
We're able to do these programs within existing systems, and then we get research partners to help us evaluate these programs. What's really exciting about that is that then you can come to the Ministry of Health and say, "look what we were able to do with your team in your hospital," or "look what we were able to do with your team in your school." And that makes for a much better proposal for systems change.
Kathleen Schalch 30:57
El Salvador's government is currently collaborating with Glasswing to integrate its community schools model into hundreds of public schools and communities facing some of the highest rates of violence. Glasswing also hopes to help nursing and medical schools, teachers colleges and police academies refashion their curricula in the future. Dionne Delgado says the goal is to spread mental health awareness everywhere it's needed.
Dionne Delgado 31:23
So the idea of Glasswing--Glasswing's big idea--is to create a trauma-informed ecosystem.
Kathleen Schalch 31:31
Glasswing's goal is systems change. But Celina de Sola says Glasswing is still committed to responding to what local communities want, and what each individual person needs to heal.
Celina de Sola 31:43
It's about the individual. And it's about how that individual understands and copes, so then interpersonally they can also apply that understanding and create a society that's much more empathetic and conducive to healing, and not perpetuating the violence that we're trying to stop.
Jonathan Levine 32:06
Emanuel, the Glasswing volunteer who told his story at the beginning of this episode, says it's possible to change society one person at a time. He often thinks of a boy in his after-school club, who came to him one day and thanked him.
Emanuel 32:24
I hadn't done anything special for him. I asked why he was thanking me. He told me that he was having problems at home with his family and his stepfather. He might have faced violence or abuse. He had been thinking of joining a gang, and one had just tried to recruit him.
Jonathan Levine 32:46
But the boy said he turned down the offer because Emanuel had taught him to expect something more from his life. It reminded Emanuel of the choice he made to leave violence behind, and that he really could make a difference in these kids' lives. He says he ran to the teachers' lounge, so the boy wouldn't see him cry.
Emanuel 33:08
This magic that they create in Glasswing--all these wonderful things that we sometimes don't recognize that we have. We can go from not being able to help, to really wanting to. Anyone has the power to break out of the shell they are trapped in. That magic has remained with me.
Jonathan Levine 33:33
Thank you so much for joining us on the journey today to El Salvador with Glasswing International. If you want to leave a comment about our podcast, go to ssir.org/unchartedground and find the comment link at the top of any of the episode pages. Or email us at [email protected]. You can subscribe to Uncharted Ground on any platform where you listen to podcasts--Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and many others. And if you enjoyed this episode, please give us a rating on those sites. It'll help more people find out about us. In our next episode: Solar energy is a logical source for electrifying a vast country like India. But it powers far more than lights and machinery.
Harish Hande 34:22
Don't think about solar only in terms of oh, it's a solar panel and solar batteries. Solar for us is the democratization of power.
Jonathan Levine 34:32
Powering and empowering the rural poor in India and beyond. Next time on Uncharted Ground.
Jonathan Levine 34:42
This episode was reported and written by Kathleen Schalch and produced by me. Jennifer Goren edited the story. Tina Tobey Mack provided sound editing and design. Barbara Wheeler-Bride and Bryan Maygers manage our audience development. Our thanks to Celina de Sola and her entire team at Glasswing for sharing their story with us. Uncharted Ground is produced and distributed in partnership with the Stanford Social Innovation Review at Stanford University, and online at ssir.org. I'm Jonathan Levine, and you have been on Uncharted Ground.