A Dream that Blooms in Freedom – Sofía Galíndez

Sofía smiles with her eyes. From them emanates a light that reveals pure joy without the need for her lips to curve.

She is seven years old and so curious and spontaneous that it’s not hard to understand why she has already won two silver medals in the Recreational Olympics of Math and Language: one in 2023 and another in 2024.

Sofía lives in Aguirre, a small town in the high valleys of Carabobo state, near Montalbán and far from any urban privilege. In her home, a humble house flanked by an imposing cotoperí tree, three other women reign: her maternal grandmother, her mother, and her aunt.

She is an only child. Her mother, Mariangel Pinto, is 31 and works as a cleaner at the hospital in the nearby city of Bejuma. Her grandmother also works at the same health center, and her aunt, Daniela, the youngest, is a lawyer who works at the local courts.

At the public school where Sofía is enrolled—the formal one, the one she must attend by law—classes are held only two days a week. Mosaic schedule, they call it: a makeshift arrangement from pandemic confinement times that, due to worsening teacher absenteeism, became the norm.

On one of those two school days, Mariangel received a note from Sofía’s teacher written directly in her notebook. Then came another note, and then another: that the girl doesn’t pay attention, that she’s falling behind, that she’s struggling with reading, that she can’t even write.

Worried by the growing collection of messages, Mariangel decided to allocate part of her $70 monthly salary to pay for the services of an educator to help Sofía, who at that time, just starting elementary school, truly didn’t know how to read or write. It was her mother who told her, like a medical prescription: “Take her to Yasmir.”

Yasmir Granadillo is one of those people born to educate, to be a guiding light in her students’ lives. She’s one of those “old school” teachers, the kind that never stop searching for ways to teach—and always find them.

In 2020, deep into the pandemic, her calling, financial need, and the insistence of several families led her to create the educational center Guiding My Steps (Guiando mis pasos), a space set up in her own home to serve both elementary and high school students.

At first, she thought it would simply be a tutoring place for school assignments, but upon realizing the deep academic deficiencies of her first students, she knew her work would have to go much further.

Among those early students was Sofía, with her school notebook full of notes of disapproval.

Very quickly—Yasmir recalls—the girl began absorbing knowledge, picking up letters, syllables, words, understanding what they meant and, best of all, marveling at each story she entered, excited, confident, now knowing how to read.

María Lucía, Yasmir’s daughter, a fourth-year student at Aguirre’s only high school and a teaching assistant at the center, was both architect and witness of the transformation.

In April 2023, not long after Guiding My Steps became part of The Beautiful Tree (El bello árbol), her students were invited to participate in the Recreational Olympics of Math and Language. That year, thanks to the alliance with Motores por la Paz Foundation (Fmplp), which organizes the competitions, the micro-school network of Montalbán registered 81 children—including Sofía.

She took the preliminary tests in both Math and Language. They were in-person exams, physical, on paper—though multiple choice, they were very different from her school exams: these featured fun challenges for the mind, more than for memory.

A few weeks later, when the results came in, Sofía Galíndez’s name appeared on two lists. She had qualified in both subjects and advanced to the next phase of the RO: the respective regional tests, now in virtual format.

She had never used a computer. Much less a tablet. Her closest experience with technology was a not-so-great relationship with her mother’s battered cellphone.

It was Mariangel who, days before the exams, told Yasmir that Sofía was feeling anxious, almost panicked: she wanted badly to take the tests, but didn’t know how she’d manage without knowing how to use a computer or anything like it.

María Lucía, in a situation not so different from Sofía’s since she also didn’t have a computer, dusted off an old laptop. On it, the girl quickly learned the essentials: basic computer skills and self-confidence.

Armed with both, she successfully completed the first challenge, the Math test—without any of the technical hiccups anticipated by The Beautiful Tree Montalbán organizers, Yasmir, or María Lucía.

But three days later, on the day of the Language test, there was no electricity in Aguirre—so, no internet either. Plan B, C, D, and E: Sofía started the exam at a well-known farm-spa in Aguirre, but at one point had to be taken out because their generator shut down due to lack of fuel. Yasmir and María Lucía, on their motorcycle, then headed to the town’s small grocery store—the only place in the area with a working generator. There, on a borrowed laptop, and later on her teacher’s phone, the girl and her educators managed to get the job done.

The announcement of the four medals earned by students from the Beautiful Tree Montalbán network in their RO debut shone with the silver gleam of Sofía Galíndez’s achievement.

“I feel strong,” she replied to the many congratulations that poured in once her victory was known.

“I feel strong,” she repeats today, after winning a second silver medal—again in Language—in the just-completed 2024 RO.

“I feel strong,” she says once more. And smiles with her eyes of crystalline light.

Mary Elizabeth León / Periodista

@marytaleon