It has been an incredibly hectic winter-spring at Worldfund, and we are sorry to be so overdue in getting this eNewsletter to you.

We recently opened Worldfund Mexico, our first on-the-ground, registered office, under the direction of Elena Espinosa de los Reyes Wingate. Elena recently moved back to her native Mexico with her family, after eight years living in London, England. Elena had an illustrious 21 year career at Bancomext (the Mexican Bank for Foreign Trade), where she was working on promoting Mexican exports and attracting foreign investment. We are thrilled to have Elena ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) join our team.

Elena's responsibilities will cross all three of Worldfund's programs areas - schools, teacher training and afterschool, gifted youth. Specifically, Elena will: (1) Direct Worldfund's efforts to develop a principal training program, with one of Mexico's most respected teacher training program institutes; (2) Provide on-the-ground support of our IAPE (Inter-American Partnership for Education) teacher training program in partnership with Dartmouth College, Fundacion Televisa and Nextel Mexico; and (3) Coordinate the launch of our new afterschool arts/literacy program at Mano Amiga Chalco, in partnership with Harvard University.

We are in the process of opening Worldfund Brasil, which should be up and running very shortly. Worldfund Brasil's primary program focus will be to support our existing afterschool gifted youth programs (Reading Circles in Sao Paulo and Oguntec in Salvador, Bahia) and, most important, to launch our new afterschool STEM Brasil program (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) for disadvantaged, highly motivated public high school youth. Our goal with this intensive 2-year, 800-hour program is to encourage talented, underprivileged youth to pursue careers in engineering sciences/related technical fields and to provide these students with the academic training they need to pursue postsecondary technical or university level education, which is so critical to breaking the cycle of poverty in Latin America.

We are gearing up for our 4th Education Leadership Award dinner, honoring Petrobras President and CEO, Jose Sergio Gabrielli and NII (Nextel International) Chairman, Steven Shindler, in early June in NYC. As with our last three dinners, this one will be a sold-out (and fun) affair.

In this eNewsletter, we bring you updates from Alessandra Holowesko on our development and outreach efforts, including exciting events in Miami, Florida, and Jim Citron on our IAPE Mexican teacher training program. Finally, we provide a link to a fantastic article recently published about our partner Estrela do Mar (Starfish School) in Alagoas, Brazil.