After more than a week in the mountains of Bolivia, I’m headed home — back to Richmond, Virginia, and my life of comparative ease and comfort. As the ground falls away beneath the plane, I’m staring out the window, trying to compose coherent thoughts, but they are lost amid a thousand mental images of the people and scenes I’ve experienced in the last few days. Our tour guide: An architect rises from poverty Roberto Andrade’s […]

Roberto Andrade and his wife, Verónica, are waiting for us when we step off the plane in hot, humid Santa Cruz. Roberto is an artist and an architect now, but he was once a little boy with enormous potential and struggling parents who worried about his future. They saw the talent and creativity in their son and knew that a quality education would help him develop into a happy, healthy adult. “Because the happiest people […]

Our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, and I flew into La Paz just before sunrise, after an overnight trip from Richmond. I was woozy from fatigue or the elevation — 13,000 feet above sea level — and grateful when a young woman woke up at 4 am to check us into our hotel. A City in the Mountains I woke up as the sun rose, and got my first view of an amazing vertical […]