Dear Oprah,
     Clear and straight up, here's why educating Valary is worth your time and effort:
1. She is a HARD working student...the top in her class.
2. She wants to earn the best education possible for the soul purpose of using her obtained knowledge to better Africa.  She is PASSIONATE about this goal. 
3. I spent a good bit of time with Valary while I was in Mbita...enough to observe that the other children look up to her and defer to her leadership skills. Having observed and worked with many different socio-economic levels, personality traits, and varying family styles of all sorts throughout the last 10 years of teaching...I know what I know.  And I know that Valary is going places.
4. She will make you proud.
   
     That's all for tonight...I'm watching your interview with Chris Christie. Which by the way, evaluating teachers isn't the only answer - it must go hand in hand with equally evaluating parenting. Every school I have ever worked in (which runs the gamut from private all girls' school in downtown Charleston where my mother was once in boarding school all the way to a school in the neighborhood that at that time had the 3rd highest violent crime rate in the United States where I was in the middle of a real lock down where a man ran from the police through the school trying to duck for cover) had amazing teachers in it - everyone of them with their heart in the right place.  The MAIN, though admittedly not the only, difference in each school is the varying level of  parental/community support in each.  It's almost that simple. Why are we trying to make it so much more complicated? Schools with community members who are involved accept nothing less than the best for their children...and everything else falls into place from there. 

     Valary is so very lucky to have had the community of CGA...but now she's ready for more. Will you be her community outreach?