Virginia Mata’s Story Comes Full Circle—and Shatters Misperceptions Along the Way
“When I was young, I just always wanted to just succeed and make my mom proud,” says Virginia Mata. “I wanted to break the cycles of poverty and illiteracy in my family. I didn’t want to be just another statistic and I wanted my nieces and nephews to do better and to have a better childhood.”
As you’ll see in this story, Mata got her wish. And now, she’s working to make sure that more and more kids in San Antonio can do what she did.
And how did she do it? That’s part of the story she tells—it took hard work, but it also took all kinds of support, from food stamps to home repair programs to all sorts of support from her family’s Westside community. Mata is here to remind us that no one can do it alone.
Read Ben Olivo’s feature on Virgina Mata in Echoes magazine.