Spreading the Wealth: a Conversation With Do Something Award Winner Katia Gomez.

Will Ferrell, Ben Affleck, Olivia Munn … and BU School of Public Health student Katia Gomez.

The MPH candidate found herself in star-studded company this August when she took top prize at the nationally televised “VH1 Do Something Awards,” which honor young adults age 25 and under for their social change projects. Gomez won a $100,000 grant – and a winged shoe trophy — for creating Educate2Envision (E2E), a non-governmental organization that helps build schools and educate impoverished children in central Honduras.

“This is going to Honduras,” said Gomez when accepting the award. “Things are going to improve for those girls, and they’re going to do something big too.”

During her first visit to Honduras in 2009, Gomez saw the effects of extreme poverty in a country where nearly half of the population is age 16 and younger and more than half of all Hondurans survive on the equivalent of $2 a day. Children in the region rarely receive more than a few years of formal education. Many end up working in their family’s fields, or marrying and getting pregnant as early as 14.

From a pilot program established on a shoestring budget, Educate2Envision has expanded its work into three remote communities where Gomez and her co-workers have brought secondary education to more than 450 students.

Here, the San Leandro, Calif., native reflects on what inspired her to launch E2E, what the grant money will mean to her outreach work — and what her mother said to her after the awards show.

Q: What was your reaction when you first heard your name called — by Ben Affleck, no less?

“If you’ve had the chance to see my expression on TV, that really says it all. I was completely shocked. And to add to that amazement, Ben Affleck pronounced my name correctly! It felt like an eternity from the time he opened the envelope until he said my name. It’s actually hard for me to remember what happened in the seconds after he read the winner because I felt so overwhelmed with emotion. The times I have watched the video clip since the show, I still get butterflies in my stomach when he’s about to name the winner, even though I know the answer now.”

“I had won a previous $500 seed grant from Do Something.org early last year to help get us off the ground, and even that was a lot of money for us, so you can imagine how we felt applying for $100,000! I was optimistic about possibly making it to the semi-finals, but going past that level seemed very unlikely, considering how small and low-budget we were. Luckily for us, the judges saw the impact we were making and gave us this priceless opportunity.”

Q: What was the award season process like?

“It began with over a thousand applications from young people 25 and younger both from the U.S. and Canada. Afterwards, around early June, they announced the 12 semi-finalists hour by hour on Facebook. My picture was 11th out of the 12 to show up, so by nine I had almost given up hope.

“We were then flown out to New York for almost six hours of interviews with four different panels. It was pretty intimidating, but it gave the semi-finalists awesome practice to really fine-tune what we wanted to say about our work. The final step was the announcement of the final five who would appear on VH1 and be granted $10,000. The Do Something! team was really tricky and emailed each of us asking for additional information over Skype, but it turned out they were telling that we made it to the final round.”

Q: In your acceptance speech, you talked about your first volunteer visit to Honduras as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, and the little girl who eventually inspired you to create Educate2Envision.

“Her name is Jenny, and when I left to head back home after my Spring Break trip to Honduras, I felt this need to sponsor her through school. That was the only method I could think of [to] improve her well-being in some small way. I didn’t know why, at the time, she stuck in my mind so much, but I found out shortly after that her parents had been murdered when she was much younger and that she now lived with her grandmother, who had pulled Jenny out of school to work. The group working down there sent me a picture of Jenny in her new school uniform and backpack with a big smile on her face. For me, seeing that picture and hearing that story was the catalyst. I told myself I needed to find out if there were other kids like her who were practically having their futures stripped from them through no fault of their own. As a young person fortunate enough to have gotten to this level in my education, I felt a sense of responsibility to help those who could barely make it past sixth grade.”

Q: What challenges did you face in getting Educate2Envision off the ground?

“There were a few different challenges, the most obvious probably being that I knew absolutely nothing about starting a 501(c)(3) organization. I had to spend a ton of time borrowing books from the library about what I was getting myself into. Aside from all the paperwork, financially it was very difficult because we didn’t have any major connections with big donors – we [relied on] bake sales and small donations from family and friends. On the field, starting our first high school in Honduras required that we find a minimum of 10 sixth-grade graduates who would make up the entering class or else we wouldn’t be granted permission by the government. Even in a town of around 800, we struggled to find 10, but luckily pulled through in the end.”

Q: At what point did you realize your work was having a real impact?

“I think, in particular, of when a survey was handed out to the girls in high school asking what age they wanted to have their first child. Each girl increased her previous answer by nearly four years — all wanted to wait until around their mid-20s instead of 16, 17, which was the common answer before. [I was also inspired] when I found out that primary school enrollment rates were doubling, showing me that because high schools now existed, parents were prioritizing education like never before.”

Q: How have your education and experiences at BUSPH helped your work?

“I think it’s crucial to think critically about your next move before you implement it, and BUSPH does a good job of reminding its students of this. One of my favorite quotes comes from the essay collection In the River They Swim: “Many people have a heart for the poor, but there are few who have a mind for them.” To do this kind of work, you definitely need compassion, but you also need to train yourself to think in a structured way so that you are always keeping the needs of your community at the forefront. Many classes that I have taken thus far stress this, and it was a great help to me. I was also awarded a Santander Fellowship for my practicum this past summer, which enabled me to continue my fieldwork.”

Q: What are your plans for the $100,000 grant? How does this change the scope of your mission?

“This grant is a complete game changer for Educate2Envision. We have our sights set on investing in nearly 10,000 students to become first-generation high school students throughout Honduras. We are also working to create a mobile “Girls Leadership” unit that will travel and set up shop throughout hundreds of communities to propel our mission of decreasing teen pregnancy rates and nurturing confidence and self-worth in thousands of young girls. And next year we’re planning our first U.S. college campus tour to jumpstart Educate2Envision chapters nationwide!”

Q: You often speak about growing in a single-parent home, and credit your mother for instilling the values you carry forward today.

“Well, my mom herself wasn’t able to reach the level of education she would have liked to, but instead had to enter the workforce earlier on. So from as early as I can remember, she reminded me how important it was to apply myself in school. She didn’t want me to struggle as we had financially when I was younger, and for her the answer was education. I took that to heart — I wanted to make sure I could support her later in life with a good-paying job when I was ready to settle into a career.”

Q: She looked so proud of you at the awards show. What did she say to you when you finally caught up with her?

“Oh yes, the cameras caught her sobbing with joy! She reminded me again of how proud she is of me and can’t wait to see what my next steps are with E2E.”

Submitted by Meaghan Agnew meaghans@bu.edu