CenturyLink New Mexico

QWEST FOUNDATION DONATES $5,000 TO TEACH FOR AMERICA

$255,000 Donated to New Mexico Organizations; Employees and CenturyLink Pioneers Donated More Than 30,000 Hours

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Aug. 1, 2007 – The CenturyLink Foundation today announced a $5,000 grant to support Teach For America-New Mexico’s movement to eliminate educational inequality in the state.

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity. This year in New Mexico, a corps of 65 of the nation’s most promising future leaders are directly impacting the lives of nearly 5,600 students in 30 public schools in the Navajo Nation, Zuni Pueblo and Gallup.

“The CenturyLink Foundation believes that all children deserve a quality education, regardless of income or ethnic background,” said Loretta Armenta, CenturyLink president for New Mexico. “Teach For America is working to have talented recent college graduates commit to spend two years teaching in public schools, and that is a program that the CenturyLink Foundation is proud to support.”

Landon Mascarenaz, executive director of Teach For America-New Mexico, said, “In the short run, our corps members work relentlessly to ensure that more students growing up today in our country's lowest-income communities are given the educational opportunities they deserve. In the long run, our alumni are a powerful force of leaders working from inside education and from every other sector to affect the fundamental changes needed to ensure that all children have an equal chance in life.”

Teach For America’s theory of change calls for providing more students growing up in low-income communities with the educational opportunities they deserve, while growing the force of influential Americans who will work from every sector for fundamental change. The nearly 17,000 individuals who have joined Teach For America over the past 17 years have proven that the impact is both immediate and lasting.

This fall, some 5,000 Teach For America corps members will work in 25 urban and rural areas profoundly affected by the achievement gap. They are working extraordinarily hard to ensure their students achieve academic success—despite the inequities they face.