By Nausicaa Chu
In Cieneguita, Panama, a single main road cuts through a patchwork of grass and trees like a vein. To the south, the road winds through empty swaths of green before reaching the small village. Most people have never heard of this village. Even people 20 minutes down the road do not know that it exists.
Yet, 3,000 miles away, Gina Winn and students from Restoration Academy and Over the Mountain schools have built a close partnership with Cieneguita. Winn and her students have travelled to this village over 20 times as part of the Hecho Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides English-language courses and community assistance for the village. It has impacted hundreds of students on either side of the gulf.
One year, the Hecho Project built a covered walkway to shield students from the rain. Another year, they organized a carnival. Last spring, they bought air conditioning units to stop the computer lab from overheating. “We’re founded on helping this one little village become more educated and have more opportunities through learning English,” says Winn, Executive Director of the Hecho Project.
Though the project began in 2015, its origins go back further than that—to Winn’s childhood. No stranger to world travelling, Winn’s father was in the Navy, and she grew up in Cuba and Spain. She began learning Spanish in third grade, becoming fluent. After travelling to Panama with Canterbury United Methodist Church, Winn fell in love with the Cieneguita community and founded the Hecho Project. “So many things that had happened in my life were leading me to this,” says Winn. “It just gives me chills to think about.”
Nearly every summer since 2015—excluding the pandemic years—with a bus full of eager Over the Mountain students, luggage and school supplies, Winn has left the skyscrapers and triple-lane highways of Panama City for the Cieneguita road. At the wheel is Lenin. Winn met the bus driver at the airport one year, and he has driven the students ever since.
This kind of long-term relationship extends to the entire community. “As soon as we start driving into the village, they see the bus, and they’re all running down the street,” laughs Winn.
In the mornings, Winn and her students teach English at the Centro Educativo Básico General De Cieneguita, or Cieneguita General Basic Education Center. While English is a required subject in Panama, the school’s teachers are not fluent in the language and lack the resources to teach it.
The problem is systemic: the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) notes that many rural areas in Panama do not have access to quality education. To combat this, Winn created a bilingual curriculum that the teachers could use even without Hecho help. “I print out, put it in folders and take it down every year,” says Winn.
Though it faces challenges, the Cieneguita school is bright and colorful. Classrooms are painted in greens and reds, while the outside of the school is pink, white and blue. Student artwork decorates the walls. The front lawn is covered in tires with plants and flowers inside—an Hecho Project gardening initiative.
In the afternoons, the Birmingham and Cieneguita students play soccer and do arts and crafts together. Though a language barrier exists, the students quickly form friendships. “If you ran into somebody that speaks Spanish here, and you speak no Spanish, you’re going to try to help them, and you’re going to have this mutual respect for each other,” says Winn. “So that’s how they are.”
Not only is the respect between the students mutual—the benefits of the relationship are too. The Over the Mountain students bond with the local children, practice their Spanish and broaden their perspectives.
After developing a strong connection to the community, many students join multiple trips. Charlotte Winn has gone 10 times; Louise Knight, nine; Mary Johnson Bradford, eight. One summer they, along with Adelia Collier and Lucy Windle, spent a month in Cieneguita teaching and serving the community.
In 2019, Winn began bringing Restoration Academy students on the trips. Restoration Academy, where Winn teaches Spanish, is a private, 501(c)(3) Christian school in Fairfield. With the support of board members and community partners, Winn has raised over $70,000 to provide scholarships for her Spanish students to go to Cieneguita.
The trip has a transformative impact. “It’s life changing. It just feeds me. It feeds these kids,” says Winn.
This year, Winn travelled to Cieneguita twice: during spring break with Restoration Academy students and during the summer with Over the Mountain students. Her next initiative is to help young community men—her former students—build a once-a-week baseball clinic for 11- to 13-year-old boys, in the hopes of teaching good habits and choices.
Winn could not have predicted any of this while learning Spanish in third grade: not that Spanish would take her to Cieneguita, Panama; not that she would teach English to hundreds of local children; not that hundreds more Birmingham students would join her mission.
But a single road can lead to unexpected destinations.
For more information,see @hechoproject on Instagram or contact [email protected].
