Grace Outreach

Quevarda: In Her Own Words

Quevarda was a student at Grace Outreach in 2009 and passed her GED exam in April of 2010. Q was with us for about 3 months before we sent her to take the test. for the first time in early 2010. She passed with high marks in all subjects but writing and math. Grace Outreach's individualized curriculum allowed her to come back for 5-6 more weeks to focus just on writing and math. The second time she took the test, she passed. 

Following graduation, Quevarda enrolled in and completed the job training program at NEW-NYC (Non-traditional Employment for Women).

NEW prepares women for nontraditional careers in the construction, utilities, maintenance, green, and transportation industries and is one of Grace Outreach's Career Prep partner organizations. Many women choose to partake in one of the free or very-low-cost programs GO partners with after obtaining their GED to get the practical and technical skills they need to compete in the job market.

NEW graduates are placed in high-paying, unionized blue-collar careers that enable them to achieve economic self-sufficiency.

The program was a particularly good fit for Quevarda because "you don't need to write essays in construction."  As for the math, before Grace Outreach, Q used to "hate" it and tell herself "she wasn't any good at it." Thanks to Zeki, Quevarda's take on math today is more like this: 

"Math is now doable, Zeki gave me lots of tricks. Zeki kept the words easy to understand--more entertaining. It was like you weren't really doing math. I was more relaxed. Now all the main formulas are in my brain."

Quevarda even brought her daughter over to Grace Outreach and she passed every section except for the math. She's coming back soon to get a dose of Zeki's sassy math lessons.

 Quevarda (left) comes back to Grace to represent NEW-NYC at a recent Career Fair.