Monthly Archives: May 2018

Rumario: To provide for his ailing uncle and 8 others in his family, this young man became a welder.

Rumario WAVS Welding Graduate

How learning welding skills can provide for a whole family in West Africa Rumario started out welding like most other young people in Guinea-Bissau who want to learn a trade skill: He found someone who’s already working, and watched and learned. In West Africa, these informal internships are common. But they have many shortcomings, including […]

Rosa: This high school student worked in a rock quarry so she could afford English classes. Now she’s a teacher.

Rosa English Graduate

I sat next to Rosa on the veranda of her family home – a home made out of mud bricks that she and her family had dug out of the earth around them and were later hardened under the unrelenting sun. Her mother sat nearby, her coarse hands revealing a woman no stranger to physical […]

Bruno’s dreams evolve with his vocational education from the WAVS School.

WAVS Graduate Auto Mechanics

In West Africa, a vocational education can make dreams a reality. As a little boy in Guinea-Bissau, Bruno would sit in class daydreaming of one day becoming a famous soccer player like the ones pictured on the front of a notebook he brought to school every day.  But when he would get home, Bruno’s mom […]