News · 10/01/2022
Portland Community College tells our founder's story
In January 2022, Portland Community College published a feature about the journey of Esmeraldo Silva, founder and CEO of our foundation. The article, written by Abe Proctor, recalls how, in 1998, amid civil war, Esmeraldo left Guinea-Bissau on a bicycle, crossing borders until he reached Senegal and later Cape Verde.
It was there that he met an American Peace Corps volunteer, who helped him travel to the United States. Once in America, one of his first jobs was driving a truck for seventeen months, crossing the country from coast to coast — and that is how he discovered Oregon, which reminded him of home with its rain, its green and its nature.
It was in Portland that he founded the Professor Joaquim Silva Foundation, named after his father, a teacher at a Catholic mission school. A 2016 visit to a primary school in Guinea-Bissau, its roof letting the rain through, made his mission clear: to help the children of his homeland study in better conditions.
Today, the foundation bridges two communities — Portland, Oregon, and Mansoa, Guinea-Bissau — channelling resources and expertise into education, health care and sustainable farming.
You can read the full feature on the official Portland Community College website