How Education Changes Lives for Under-Served Youth Around the World

Katia Gomez is the Executive Director of Educate2Envision (E2E) International, a nongovernmental organization that helps build schools and educate impoverished children in central Honduras. 

Ms. Gomez, a past Rotary Scholar, took top prize at the nationally televised VH1 Do Something! Awards in 2012. The awards honor young adults 25 and under for their social change projects. Gomez won a winged shoe trophy—and a $100,000 grant—for creating Educate2Envision (E2E).

Ms. Gomez first went to Honduras in 2009 as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, to volunteer during spring break. There she saw the effects of extreme poverty in a country where nearly half of the population is age 16 or younger and more than half of all Hondurans survive on the equivalent of $2 a day. Children in the region rarely get more than a few years of formal education. Many end up working in their family’s fields, or starting families as early as 14.

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

In 2012, Forbes Magazine named Ms. Gomez one of its Top 12 “Amazing Young Entrepreneurs Doing Good”. The following year, Newsweek named her one of its "Top 25 Women Under 25 in the World to Watch." 

Ms. Gomez served as District Chair for CARE USA in 2009-2011, speaking to politicians in Washington DC and locally about the importance of empowering women and girls to conquer global poverty; and she was a 2015 Global Fellow for Ashoka, the largest network of social entrepreneurs investing in innovative change-makers worldwide. 

Ms. Gomez has been a featured speaker at youth conferences worldwide including: Millennium Campus Conference, Women Deliver International Conference, and Hugh O Brian World Summit. She earned her Master of Public Health from Boston University and her B.A. in International Studies from the University of California, San Diego.

Ms. Gomez is a native of San Leandro and a Moreau Catholic High School alumna.

She will share her experiences working in international development and how she and her nonprofit organization have developed a unique way to make education accessible for under-served youth in Honduras.

Presiding on 5/23: President-Elect Sean Reinhart