Doing Good, Doing Well (Great Stories: Low Intermediate): Wayzgoose Graded Readers

By Jeremy Taylor

16-year old Marcus has a nice house in Florida and a mother who loves him. But he isn't doing well. He's bored with his friends. He's rude to his neighbors. His mother worries that, just maybe, her son isn't a very good person. 

 

Nearly 3000 miles away in Guatemala, Elisa isn't doing well either. She needs money! Not for herself—for her goats. If she had some money, she could build a barn to protect her goats from wild animals. She could buy a machine to make cheese to sell in the market. But banks don't lend money to 17-year old girls.

 

Gloria wasn't doing well after her husband died, but she tried hard to make a better life for herself—and her friends. She worries about her friend's son Marcus, though. What will make him care about more than pizza with extra cheese—and himself? Then she gets an idea…

 

When these three people with nothing in common are connected through a microfinancing website, the power of doing good changes all of them—and their lives—forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
• Release date: Aug 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201031398

Book preview

I

Elisa

Chapter One

Hey, come on, Freddy! You’re taking all the food! Don’t be so greedy!

Elisa pushed Freddy away so that the female goats could eat the food she had brought them. Freddy wasn’t happy and looked at Elisa. Elisa stared back at him. You’ve had plenty of food – and you’re not the one that gives us milk!

Elisa Pinto was seventeen. She lived in a small village in the mountains of southwestern Guatemala. She lived with her mother and her grandparents. Elisa went to school until she was thirteen, but then her father died of a heart attack. Elisa’s mother wanted her to stay in school, but Elisa could see that her Mom could not work on the farm with just her grandparents to help. The goats needed to be milked once a day and sometimes twice. Then the milk had to be looked after and made into yogurt and cheese. Someone also had to take it to the market and sell the different products.

Elisa knew that she could help her mother with the goats. She also knew that her family had to pay a lot of money to send her to secondary school. Her father used to tell her that education was the way to get a better life. Elisa knew that her father was right, but what could she do?

A shed for animals

So Elisa left school just before her fourteenth birthday and started working with her mother and grandparents. She got up with her mother at six to milk the goats. Then she went to the shed behind the house with her grandmother to prepare the yogurt and cheese. Elisa worked hard all day. She was happy to be with her mother and her grandparents, but she missed school and her friends there. Sometimes her school friends came to Elisa’s farm to see Elisa and her