Three years ago, the life of El Chorrillo resident Julia Sánchez, in her own words, “had no direction”.  In her home there was never enough money to make ends meet and in her mind she could not see a way out of poverty for her family.

When she happened upon our CAPTA Program, which offered to open opportunities in the hospitality industry through personal development and vocational courses, she took a chance and enrolled. CAPTA stands for “Capacitación para el Trabajo” in Spanish.  

It is an intense seven-week course, which we founded to provide job training for women from the neighborhoods of San Felipe, Santa Ana, El Chorrillo and Calidonia.

Our formula for the program’s success is what happens before the women even get to the arts of housekeeping, food handling and customer service:  We spend the first four weeks of the program working on the women as individuals and building a sense of team.  This intense “Foundation Cycle” includes professionally taught workshops on emotional intelligence, resentment and forgiveness, personal finance, effective communication, personal image and beauty, first aid and other subjects, along with frequent one-on-one counseling sessions with the program’s psychologists.

For Julia Sánchez, the chance paid off.  Since 2008 she has been permanently employed at the boutique hotel Canal House and believes she will have saved enough to buy her own home within two years.

Julia’s story seems to be more the rule than the exception. Since starting the program in 2007, over 180 women have graduated, and according to our records, more than 85% of the graduates have found permanent employment.  Part of the reason for the high success rate is undoubtedly our alliance with Empresas Bern’s Panama International Hotel School in Ciudad del Saber, which provides Panama’s most advanced hospitality training.   The cost of putting a woman through CAPTA is around $900. We definitely look at this as a long-term investment other than charity, because we believe that as long as we have stories like this one, we are making better not just a woman’s life but also her family’s. We can be positive that we are achieving our mission and getting closer to the model community that we envision.