Embracing Guatemala, Cherine Montie Found Her Calling In Service
For this first in-depth feature article, Andrew Frank sat down with Co-Executive Director Cherine Montie of Guatemala Embrace Effort, a recently-started non-profit organization that has focused on improving the lives of impoverished people in Guatemala. [...]
Rich vs. Poor In Living Color
I have felt for a while that I don't really fit in with a lot of my neighbors. One of my co-workers showed me a website today that does a lot to explain why that is.[...]
Is Key to Happiness the Language You Use at Work?
Going as far back as junior high school I have always said that women who swear really do nothing or me. I mean, she can be the most gorgeous woman on the planet, but if she swears I completely lose interest. A project from the Vermont Complex Systems Center recently shed some light on why that is, and I think it has a good application in the work setting.[...]
We all know that the job market for law school graduates is the worst it’s ever been. Or at least we law school graduates know it, and know it much too well. We’ve tried everything that the law school’s career services office told us to try. We’ve sent out resumes and cover letters galore. We’ve viewed the advice of the lawyers our friends referred us to as brilliant, then stupid, then just plain out of touch—then back to brilliant before settling on completely irrelevant. All of this is admittedly and justifiably discouraging, but we have to make something of it. We have to take the opportunity for personal growth. What else is there to do?
Look back on your life. Has everything come easy for you, or have you had some major bumps in the road? Where have those bumps taken you? Have you dealt with personal losses? Have you overcome your own stupid mistakes and wrongs done to you? Think of a particularly trying experience you've had, and study it, at least in your mind. Chances are, you changed during and after that experience, and hopefully for the better. If nothing else, you can say, "I've been through that. I came out all right, and now I can deal with more difficult challenges." Our personal growth is dependent on our reactions to the events that come our way.
This situation you find yourself in now is no different. It's going to be hard. It's probably not going to end any time soon. You're not going to find your dream job tomorrow. But guess what: You're going to get through it. You're going to be all right. You should hope to come out a better person for having gone through it.
The legendary Walt Disney said, "All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
Decide right now if you believe that. Decide right now that you'll take this opportunity to start working on those things in your life that make you feel inferior, inadequate, or otherwise unworthy of admiration. You can't make someone hire you. You can't control the economy. But you can become a better person. You can become a better husband, father, mother, wife, son, daughter, friend, neighbor, or co-worker. Don't give yourself any other excuses to get down on yourself. You don't want to be underemployed and a jerk. Control what you can, the best you can, and let the rest work itself out.
"Every man has his price," so the saying goes. At one point I was convinced that my price was whatever a lawyer makes. A few years working at various positions in law firms woke me up to the fact that in most cases, a lawyer doesn't make as much as I thought, and if they do, the price is far above what I'm willing to pay. 14-hour days, 6 or 7 days per week -- and you have to be a lawyer? No thanks. No amount of money is worth hardly ever seeing my family and feeling tired and irritable whenever I do. So, I made a conscious decision not to go to law school, and while I've had my share of financial struggles and the occasional feelings of worthlessness that come with long periods of unemployment, I wouldn't trade the time I've spent at home with my family for anything.
Money just isn't a primary motivating factor for me when it comes to choosing a career. If money was enough, I'd simply chose the highest-paying industry and go with that, no matter how difficult the schooling or how miserable the day-to-day routine of the job. It seems I'm not alone. A recent survey ranked the education sector the second-lowest in average pay for 2012. Only my choice of college majors, Humanities and Social Sciences, was lower.
According to the January 2013 Salary Survey, which is produced three times per year by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average salary for someone in educational services was $40,668. The highest was the engineering sector at $61,913. Interestingly enough, education also led all other fields in the number of entering graduates with 444,500. So despite the low pay, more college graduates decided to enter the field of education in 2012 than any other.
The best-sounding answer as to why so many people chose to be teachers is probably something to the effect that they genuinely feel the call to serve their fellow man by educating the rising generation, and I don't dispute that is true for the vast majority of teachers. However, as the husband of a teacher myself, I have my own view on the matter. Teacher salary: About $35,00 per year. Every weekend, holiday and summer doing whatever you feel like: Priceless.
A teenager in Indiana has gained notoriety for having walked six miles in the ice and snow to interview for a minimum wage job. On top of that, the boy has suffered plenty of adversity in his short lifetime. His mom died recently, and he got his GED after dropping out of high school. You can read about him here: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/feb/28/teens-job-search-leads-unexpected-results/
I can’t help but wonder if situations like this were more commonplace a couple of generations ago. Culturally, I think we Americans have grown accustomed to a certain set of expectations when it comes to our jobs. Our cities are built for cars, and the climate here is generally a lot colder than that of some developing nations, where it is probably very common to walk what we would consider long distances in warmer weather to get to work. Most of my jobs have included a first day taken up with conversations with a human resources representative about insurance benefits, vacation time and where to air grievances if I feel I’m being picked on, discriminated against, or if my workload seems too heavy. I wonder if my grandparents had any experiences like that.
Even in the direst of straits when I’ve been unemployed with a wife and 3 kids to support, I’ve still been able to drive around in an air-conditioned car to look for a job that paid no less than a few bucks above minimum. Sure, I’ve had to lower my expectations a bit from my ideal job, but all in all I’m relatively satisfied with the standard of living I enjoy as an underemployed American. I’ve had plenty to eat, a roof over my head, clothes on my back and some really good times with my family.
Maybe I don’t have to walk six miles in the snow and settle for minimum wage, but I’m sure there are some things I could give up, at least on a temporary basis, if I was in the midst of a fruitless 2-year-long job search. What could you give up for a job? Your own parking space? Your own office? A six-figure salary? Two weeks of vacation? A living wage? Insurance benefits? Would you take the bus?
‘More Than a Career’ is a new blog about people, the things they do and what keeps them doing it. For this first in-depth feature article, Andrew Frank sat down with Co-Executive Director Cherine Montie of Guatemala Embrace Effort, a recently-started non-profit organization that has focused on improving the lives of impoverished people in Guatemala.
Cherine Montie, Co-Founder of Guatemala Embrace Effort
In 2001, Cherine Montie and Sherrie Hulet participated in a volunteer program teaching English at a privately owned school in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. It was a formative experience for the two, and a few years later they would find themselves again dedicating their time and effort to helping the people of the country they came to love. The story of how these women started Guatemala Embrace Effort is inspiring. It is also very informative for anyone interested about how to start a charitable organization that can have a meaningful impact on the lives of others. It also displays the profound impact that service can have on the life of the individual performing service. In this case, Cherine Montie.
Montie was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. For most of her childhood, she was a swimmer. In her words, “Competitive swimming was life.” It took up most of her time, and as a child, Montie’s personal identity was firmly tied to the sport. About halfway through high school, she had a back injury and everything changed. She could no longer compete. Montie would struggle for the next few years to find a new calling in life.
“It took me a long time to find my identity,” said Montie, “and it carried over into college.”
While taking a psychology course at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, Montie was still struggling to find herself. She admired her psychology professor, a guy who seemed to have it all together. She asked his advice, and his simple reply stuck with Montie. He said, “You can never go wrong with service.”
Although she didn’t know exactly how she would serve, Montie determined then that service is what she would do from then on. She had a classmate who had signed up for a volunteer program in Guatemala, teaching kids English. She decided to go, but she didn’t tell her parents, because she didn’t want them to know that she would be leaving school to participate in the program. Montie turned in the paperwork for what was originally supposed to be a 4 month program without saying a word about it to her mom and dad.
“4 months changed to 10 months”, says Montie, “but you can never go wrong with service.”
Upon arrival in Guatemala, Montie says she didn’t know what to expect. The atmosphere was very unfamiliar and uncomfortable, as it would be for any young person traveling abroad for the first time. “It was dark and it smelled different,”, she says. “There were a lot of weird noises.”
Montie was driven to the town of Patzacia in the Guatemalan state of Chimaltenango, where the population is largely indigenous. Half of the locals speak Spanish, the other half speak Cakchiquel, one of several native dialects spoken in the remote mountainous regions of Guatemala.
“There were armoured guards. It was kind of creepy, scary, usettling,” she says of her memories of her arrival in Patzacia. “I had never really left the country before.”
Montie and her traveling companions arrived at their houses, brick walls covered with sheet metal roofs, where they would stay for the next few months. The January weather was surprisingly cold for the Central American country located in the tropics. Montie felt scared. She woke up the next morning to the sound of roosters. She felt confused. But then she looked out the window and saw about 6 indegenous children playing outside, dressed in “tipica”, or native clothing.
“They looked so excited,” she says.
It turned out to be the children that would calm Montie’s nerves and help her get over the culture shock. One child in particular who lived around the corner would play a role in calming her nerves. Montie would often see him working in the fields when she would go out jogging.
“There was a little boy named Edwin. He was wearing a name tag on his head,” she says, laughing.
Montie made friends with Edwin, and by the end of her initial four-month stay, she was in love with the people and country of Guatemala. She went home for a month and then returned for another 6.
Guatemalan girls
Montie’s first Guatemalan adventure was just a few years after a decades-long civil war officially ended in 1996. Her impression of the country was that it was a place with a lot of needs.
“People had missing limbs, missing parents,” she says. “It was a very broken kind of country, aside from what an under-developed country has to deal with.”
Montie’s love for Guatemala never waned over the years. In 2009, a few years after her marriage, Montie went back to the country with her husband before he began medical school. She got the idea to ask friends and family members to donate school supplies. “I was impressed by how much we could pull together in such a short time,” says Montie.
By now, a friend of hers from her days teaching English in Guatemala was now directing a school there. Montie was aware of some of the challenges faced by the public school system in Guatemala, including corruption and the problems brought about by the terrible nutrition that many of the students endure. She contacted her school director friend and arranged to donate the supplies she had collected.
“I felt like we could attack the heart of poverty in these public education schools,” reflects Montie.
Impressed by the ease of which she could collect school supplies, Montie decided to go ahead and formally start a non-profit organization. She contacted another friend of hers who had also spent time teaching English in Guatemala, Sherrie Hulet. Hulet was Montie’s roommate the first time she spent time in the country. At this point, Montie and her husband were financially strapped, and Michael was about to begin medical school. Challenges aside, they felt the time was right get things started.
"We started this project at the most inconvenient time in life. Between (Michael) working in a cadaver lab, me pregnant with my third and super sick, and not having much to call our own," Montie relates.
Montie and Hulet researched how to start a non-profit organization, and they found it was actually quite a bit of work and much more difficult than it was to collect school supplies. The women started from scratch, searching the internet for any information about starting a non-profit organization.
There were tax forms and mission statements to prepare. They had to obtain a charitable contribution number. They needed to set up the legal entity with officers and by-laws. They contacted lawyers and read up on the guidelines. Fortunately, some of their friends were lawyers, and they agreed to look at the paperwork free of charge. At the time they started GEE in 2009, the economy had turned sour. According to Montie, there were a lot of people starting so-called non-profits as a way to make money, and a lot of evidence was required in order to prove they were a legitimate non-profit and not just another group trying to make a buck in a bad economy.
With the help of their lawyer friends, Montie and Hulet submitted the paperwork to the IRS. Despite the usual turnaround of 6 months to 2 years, they were able to have the IRS paperwork processed in 3 months, according to Montie. The articles of incorporation were done in Idaho, because Hulet lives there, and the cost is lower than in other states. GEE is still formally headquartered in Idaho. Montie has since moved to Texas where her husband is finishing medical school. Montie and Hulet are Co-CEOs. Montie deals with the Guatemala side of things, personal contacts, the volunteer board and the newsletter. Montie’s husband Michael is the Operations Manager. Hulet handles the American side of things, and her husband handles the financials. Other friends and family members serve on the volunteer board. The organization is 100% volunteer. Nobody gets a salary, and expenses are not reimbursed. Even the flights to and from Guatemala are paid for by the individual volunteers, and Montie says it feels good.
For their first project after the official formation of GEE, Montie and her associates focused on La Escuela Oficial de Parvulos in Chimaltenango, which they had settled on through the help of contacts in Guatemala. The school is located on a former military base. The old sniper towers remain on the property. GEE was able to secure a year’s worth of school supplies through a donation from Office Max. Montie and other volunteers arranged to have the supplies delivered a bit at a time by sending them down in the luggage of volunteers visiting Guatemala. Unfortunately, the supplies were all stolen out of the school shortly after they were donated.
Undeterred by the burglary, Montie and others decided to raise enough donations to put bars on the windows of the school (to prevent any more theft) and replace the stolen supplies. They would accomplish their goal by involving the people in Chimaltenango.
“We didn’t want to be these Americans crusading, like us all-knowing Americans can take away their problems,” says Montie of their efforts. “We wanted to facilitate them taking initiative.”
They came up with the idea for a 5K, to be held in Chimaltenango. Montie says the people had never really done anything like it. A local church provided water. Restaurants donated free meals. There was a very modest entry fee. There was an election going on at the time, and campaign groups sponsored numbers, radio spots and other publicity. 5 American volunteers were running the effort, but the sponsorship was all local. They had about 150 participants.
In addition to the 5k, GEE put on a soccer clinic with the help of Montie’s brother Eric Santiago, who played soccer at San Diego State University. He secured soccer ball donations and ran the clinic. A local orphanage sent their older children to participate in the clinic and paid the entry fee. The modest amount of money they made supplemented the funds. Additional school supplies were brought down to replace the ones that had been stolen. The project was successful in two ways: First, they were able to outfit the school with much needed supplies and secure them by putting bars on the windows. Second, they were able to involve the local community and help them to take the initiative in solving their own problems.
The 5k
GEE is now working on additional projects to aid the people in Guatemala, including providing hygiene kits for the orphanage. They also volunteered time at a clinic for the malnourished in Antigua called Casa Jackson, where they witnessed some extreme cases of malnourishment and learned of their needs. They hope to be able to help the clinic more in the future.
Another school in need, Los Aposentos, is without running water and could use some improved nourishment for the students. Children at the school typically receive nothing more than a boiled plantain for lunch. The school cook decided to start a garden in order to supplement the students’ diet, and Montie is hopeful that GEE will be able to provide additional kitchen supplies. Since Los Aposentos is a public school, politics come into play, and obstacles must be overcome before GEE can help in all the ways they would like.
School children in line for lunch
Montie envisions that some day GEE can help with doing field studies to screen for malnourishment among children. She would also like to help in the areas of hygiene and nutrition education. She hints at someday expanding to other countries, but admits she may be getting ahead of herself. Michael Montie will soon be going to Guatemala to do a clinical rotation as part of his medical school training. He will scout out additional service opportunities.
And how has all of this focus on service impacted the life of Cherine Montie? The answer to that question can be summed up by a little anecdote involving Montie’s young son.
“My son is very tenderhearted,” says Montie - her voice trembling a bit. “I was telling him that there are kids who don’t have anything. I showed him pictures of the people at the malnourished clinic and he was very pensive.”
A few minutes later, the quiet little boy came up to his mom and dad, and after a little coaxing, with tears in his eyes, he offered them a handful of his own money.
“For the kids in Guatemala?” Mom asked.
A simple nod was his reply.
Montie says, “He has learned at a very young age that we are all beggars. It was impressive that he felt that. It’s becoming a Montie family lifestyle.”
It is plain to see that Cherine Montie has found her calling in service. She may have been searching for her own identity, but maybe Montie’s efforts have helped others, in Guatemala and in her own home, find their own identities as children of God who are worth the time and effort they give and receive.
Guatemala Embrace Effort accepts donations via their website, www.guatemalaembraceeffort.org. Please visit for more information.
"If you are from a lower socio-economic status and you befriend people in a higher socio-economic status, it sort of opens up vistas for you. You see other people's parents and their careers and it helps you envision yourself in those careers," said Flora. (listen to Flora's interview below)
Flora also said "career peer pressure" helped people determine their career paths as they got older. It stands to reason: if you hang out with a bunch of 35-year-old guys living in their parent's basement, chances are you are going to do a lot of the same things. Likewise, if you hang out with doctors, dentists, lawyers and other entrepreneurs, you stand a good chance of thinking and doing as they do.
Seriously. Take a moment to think about the people with whom you send the most time. Are they taking you where you want to go? Are they doing the things you want to do? Are they what you want to become?
