We met Elmer in 2007 when he was about 13 years old. It was our second summer camp in El Cantón Las Minas, Chalatenango, El Salvador. There were roughly 34 participants that year. I carried a Polaroid camera with me to take a portrait of each student. After taking the photo, I would put it on their desks and tell them: look at the photo, look at it well. Does that photo says something? Can that picture speak? I want you to tell me something about you. For example, you can tell me where you live, how old you are, something about your parents and siblings, and something about your daily life. So, when another person sees the photo with the personal history of each one of you , he/she is going to know something about you. And then, I told my story, and what I was doing on any given day, as an example.

Pencil in hand, eyes on their papers, everyone worked carefully.

At the end I collected the sheets of paper which were filled with pictures, letters and a Polaroid photo attached to each sheet of paper. The return trip to San Salvador from Las Minas is two hours, and I decided to take a look at the stories that the young people had written. All the stories were very interesting. But, there was one that stood out from all of them and it was Elmer Melgar's.

After reading it, I felt what we call beauty. The note was there and I couldn't believe that a 13 year old boy was talking to me like Morse code with his story (Read the story below).

On my last day he told me that he had not slept well because he had worked on a drawing during the night but that it was not finished. I told him that I had to go but in order not to disappoint him, I gave him my email address and this way he could communicate with me via email.

To my amazement, after three months I received an email with an attachment and it was from him. Later, Elmer was very involved in summer camps as a volunteer. About four years later, one afternoon, he stood in front of us—SCORES crew— and he told us "this is my last year here. I will be graduating on December and I have to get a job or go to university." And I replied, “why don't you go to the University? “ "Because what I want to study is not offered at the local university and I want to study engineering, but they only offer it at the Universidad Nacional de San Salvador, and my family does not have money to pay for my studies "Elmer concluded.

I told him to go and take the admissions tests and then we could talk. Two months later, I received another email from him with the acceptance note from La Universidad Nacional. We offered him a scholarship, we invited him to be part of our volunteer crew to run a summer camp in Costa Rica. He finished his Engineering Program and now he works as an engineer for a bank in El Salvador ...