Providing Opportunity to Rural El Salvador
Nov 08, 2022
Joe Albers
Providing Opportunity to Rural El Salvador

Leveraging the New World of Work to Provide Opportunity to Rural El Salvador

Having led a school through a pandemic in the USA, Joe realized he could work virtually connecting his love for the community in El Salvador to launching an organization to provide education and economic development.  Now 14 months later, Grande Center has launched a school and an adult training program in rural El Salvador.  Within the next few months, they will also launch a company to employ people from the region to do data labeling, an entry level career in the field of artificial intelligence.  The profit from the company will be turned back over to the educational model to create a self sustaining cycle of opportunity for former refugee communities from the Salvadoran Civil War.

Joe Albers, born and raised in San Jose, has dedicated his career to education for underserved communities in El Salvador and in San Jose.  He is the founding President of Grande Center for Education and Economic opportunity whose mission is to educate rural communities of El Salvador to thrive in the digital global economy.  With an innovative model of school by day and adult training by night, Grande Center is catalyzing economic opportunity in a region that has had all of the cards stacked against it. 

Joe has been visiting and working with the people of Chalatenango, El Salvador since 2000 and founded a scholarship program in 2011 in the town.  Joe previously served as founding Principal at Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School from 2013 to 2021.