Annual Report - FY2011 - Guadalupe Center

Dear Friends,
In his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, the late Steve Jobs,
former CEO of Apple, recounts the lessons he learned through “connecting
the dots.” He tells of his experience of dropping out of Reed College only
to drop in on classes that allowed him to follow his curiosity and intuition.
One of these classes was on calligraphy where he learned about what makes
great typography great. He states, “It was beautiful, historical, artistically
subtle in a way that science cannot capture, and I found it fascinating.” At the time, he could not
have imagined any practical application for calligraphy in his life. Just ten years later, when he was
designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to him. And he designed it all into the Mac,
making it the first computer with beautiful typography.
Jobs’ point in this story was to insist that you cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking back. It is not until later in life that we have the perspective needed to see how
all the dots in our lives connect to make us the people who we have become.
I think about this often when I talk to our college graduates who now have the perspective to see
how the dots of Early Childhood Education were connected to make them successful throughout their
educational careers. I am reminded of this when I see those children and families who are thriving,
when three years earlier they needed our client services to get through a rough patch in their lives. Or
when I get a knock on my office door, and a young high school honors student comes in to thank me for
the individualized tutoring they received while in our Guadalupe After-school Program (G-A-P). When
I look over the years at all the successes we have had at the Guadalupe Center and trace them back to
those seemingly inconsequential dots that we have taken the time to connect, I am truly amazed.
We take our job as Immokalee’s center for education and growth seriously, and we know that the key
to accomplishing our goal of breaking the cycle of poverty in this community is to instill in all of our
scholars, whether in preschool or in college, a sense of curiosity and an inquisitive imagination.
We are proud and thankful that you are our partners in connecting these dots for the children and
families of Immokalee. Know that we could not do this incredibly fulfilling work without your passion
and commitment, and for this, we are grateful. We have a lot of work left to do and hope that you will
continue to support us in “connecting the dots” for years to come.
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Letter From Our President
Sincerely,
Barbara Oppenheim
President, Guadalupe Center