Yngrid Stephanie Espinoza Villaruel
Fourth Year Student
Peru
A passionate conservationist
“I appreciate the faith they placed in someone that they didn’t know”, confides Yngrid Espinoza Villaruel, the first student to receive a scholarship from the “Los Hijos de la Tierra” campaign.
During her early years, Yngrid lived in various apartments in the Cusco zone in Peru with her mother and three brothers. The family never thought that would be able to live in a house of their own, but as luck would have it they were able to move into a house owned by Yngrid’s grandmother. The house was located in the Madre de Dios zone of Peru, a forested region located near the borders with Bolivia and Brazil. It was here that Yngrid’s passion for nature truly took hold.
Today, Yngrid is part of the EARTH family. When she talks about her experience here she always starts at the beginning, “…it felt like a dream, everything seemed so big.” Yngrid has adapted to life at EARTH since then and thanks to the professors and the structure of the program everything has seemed not only much more manageable but the challenge has in fact been inspirational. “Knowing that there are people [at EARTH] who believe in me gives me the hope to move forward…I’m sure that changing the world is not just a dream.”
If you would like to support the studies of students like Yngrid through “Hijos de la Tierra” or another scholarship program, please click here
