Hannah Columbia
Hun School senior Anna Massad with students in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Hun School senior Anna Massad has started a non-profit to help students in her native Colombia.

Massad and her brother were adopted in Colombia when they were infants. “I left when I was a baby, but I always knew I would go back someday,” she said.

After hearing about another teen who was helping a school in Venezuela, Massad decided she could do the same in Colombia. This summer she created a non-profit, Educacion Sin Fronteras (Education Without Borders), to help a grammar school, El Instituto El Nino Jesus, in Barranquilla, Colombia. She connected with the school through a friend of her father last spring and began Skyping with the school once a week, conducting science experiments in Spanish and teaching English. In May, she and her father visited for the first time and in July, they went for a week.

In addition to teaching, she helped the school get a more reliable internet connection and bought two large-screen TVs for the school. She said that during her short time at the school, she realized that teaching English was the most valuable thing she could offer the students.

“English is crucial for them to have more opportunities in the future,” she said.  Rosetta Stone has donated  English language software to the school.

“I am so excited and motivated to help these kids,” she said. “I plan to go back as much as I can throughout the year, to keep teaching via Skype, and help them enlarge the school.”