Quito, Ecuador. New buildings for the Solana School
Cardinal Antonio Gonzalez, Ecuador’s primate, blessed Solana’s new buildings on January 26. The school imparts instruction to young women from the Tumbaco Valley and other parts of the country in skills needed for the service industry.
The new 15,000 square foot building, includes a dozen classrooms, a computer room, and training areas for cooking, laundry and dry-cleaning operations. On graduating from secondary school, the students are given a degree in Administration of Service Institutions. In the words of Amada Botillo, a native of the Zuleta community and a graduate of Solana four years ago: «This school provides not only a sound technical education but also instruction in the moral virtues, speech etiquette, etc.»
Jeannette Ramos, from the Chota area in the northern part of the country, is one of the first graduates. She expressed her appreciation to the school for «helping us to grow in virtue, learning to know ourselves so that we could become good people, in addition to the professional training which enabled us to obtain a decent job in the hotel service field.»
Thanks to the new installations, made possible through the support of many people and institutions, this undertaking for the human and Christian advancement of women will soon be able to increase its enrollment to four hundred students from neighboring areas such as Quinche, Yaruqui, Pifo and Puembo.
Hundreds of women have been educated at Solana, where they have learned, in the words of Cardinal Gonzalez, «to unite human wisdom with true faith. In this way they carry out the apostolic vocation Blessed Josemaria insisted on so strongly.»
Romana, n. 34, January-June 2002, p. 138-139.