About Us
About The Tampico Project
Tampico is focused on creating educational opportunities for underserved communities in Mexico, exposing students to a wide range of music, language, art and cultural history studies. It’s about making pathways and bridges for students to have an education in the liberal arts, participate in cultural travel opportunities and be prepared for a pathway to college. The project is focused on young students ranging from the beginnings of kindergarten to high school with a view toward transfer to participating institutions of higher education. We’re engaging students in their own extended communities (Guadalajara and Mexico City) but with opportunities to visit foreign countries as well, including U.S. cities such as Los Angeles and New York City.
Melani Svenson
DIRECTOR
It’s safe to say that personal experience is the foundation of all education and in the case of Tampico, the personal experience of the founding director, Melani Svenson, plays an important role. Melani grew up on the outskirts of Tampico and realized firsthand that her early education there was formative to who she is today. It was and is a school with no public financial support and an entire community of young children would likely have been at a disadvantage in their own community and city had it not existed. Years later, upon returning to Tampico, Melani met with the director of the school who founded the school, which was still operating twenty years later with her grown daughter who now teaches there. Over one-hundred small children participate in classes in a modest home in the neighborhood of Ninos Heroes. Both her and her daughter’s dedication and tenacity continue to provide and invaluable service to an underserved community at great personal expense, and their capacity to enrich the lives of the young Tampico students provides a foundation for those students to grow, not only as good Mexican citizens, but potentially good citizens of the world. While much attention is paid to Mexico City and Guadalajara, and rightfully so, cities like Tampico constitute the backbone of Mexican culture. Melani’s focus on Tampico, both through her personal experience growing up there as a child and as well as her education at the directors school “Mimi’s Jardin de Ninos”, led her and the organization to conclude that a fitting start to the project would be to provide support to a school that Melani experienced, understood, and trusted.
Maria del Rosario Navarro
REGIONAL DIRECTOR
Maria is the first student scholarship recipient with the Tampico Project. Melani and her grew up together when they were children on the same neighborhood block. It wasn’t until more than twenty years later that they reunited and teamed up to lead in the Tampico community. Since then, she has successfully completed her second year of nursing school and will enroll as an international student to study the cultural arts through LA Community College online. She has helped in making connections to local schools and will lead as an educator one day upon completing her own education for the Tampico Project.