By Ricardo Lezama Maria Margarita Vega is a Colombian teacher in the United States who immigrated years ago and has settled in Georgia. Through her social networks, Vega shows the reality of many migrants who come to the United States in search of opportunities to improve their quality of life. Over a decade ago, Vega also made an appearance as a contestant in ‘Colombia’s Top Model’ developing into new avenues ever since that experience. Today, she is hoping to rally support for a philanthropic cause in her native Colombia.
Like most immigrants, their responsibilities are not exclusively to themselves but also their immediate family and family in their homeland, and for Tuty Vega, as she is known, it has been no exception as she recently showed in one of her viral videos on Tik Tok and Instagram the jobs she has had starting as a “busgirl” cleaning tables and earning $4 dollars an hour plus tips from the waiters. In these early days, she had to pedal 50 minutes on a borrowed bicycle to work.
After this experience, Vega got a job as a waitress where she earned tips with which she and a friend were able to buy her first car. However, the 30-year-old woman who is now married to an American knew that these jobs would be temporary, so she soon continued to pursue her dream of being a television presenter, which she achieved, and recounts was the worst experience of her life as she worked for free for 2 weeks without receiving a single dollar.
So Mrs. Vega had to go back to being a waitress. After this, she found her first job as a legal person of “bistro” in a hotel with a pay of $10 dollars an hour plus tips and benefits, from which she was fired due to the COVID pandemic.
But she knew there was more for her in the land of opportunities, so she applied to work as a teacher in a pre-school and today she is Mrs. Maria in an elementary school in Georgia. Today, she seeks to motivate more hispanic immigrants who, like her, go through multiple work experiences until they really find their vocation because “The first step to adapt to a new culture is to forget what you were in your place of birth, and if you are going to migrate you must be reborn” as the young woman who was a model in Colombia recounts on her YouTube channel.
Tuti’s project seeks to establish a safe play area for children in the Neighborhood Development Center
Tuti’s project is one in which she seeks to establish a safe play area for children in the Neighborhood Development Center (CDV).
“The sad reality is that the children do not have a play area, as everything is in a complete state of deterioration. In addition, they do not have an adequate space for the cafeteria, they have been victims of theft and they do not even have light in the bathrooms, among other deficiencies,” Vega recounts on her GoFundMe page.
If you would like to donate, this link above takes you to a portal where they are collecting funds for this youth.