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Carmen Osegueda-Rosa

Learn more about the Chair of Social Initiatives Committee

Carmen joined the San Lorenzo Community in 2001. She holds the role of Chair of Social Initiatives Committee since, 2004 but joined the San Lorenzo Community in 2001.

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Carmen Osegueda-Rosa

Board Member, Chair of Social Initiatives Committee

While still very young, Carmen was forced to leave her country of origin, El Salvador, due to the bloody civil war that scourged her homeland.  In 1980 she sought temporary refuge in Guatemala and then, that same year, she traveled to Mexico, and finally in 1982, she arrived in Canada in search of permanent refuge.  Before leaving El Salvador, she was a primary school teacher and while she was teaching, she was persecuted and harassed by the security forces who had identified her as a sympathizer of the revolutionary movement in her country.  During the brief period in which she worked as a teacher, she was able to become aware of the shameful social and political crisis that the Salvadorian society was experiencing as she witnessed many crimes and abuses committed by the army.  However, the most frightening point of this experience was having to witness the murder of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a famous human rights defender, who served as Metropolitan Archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 until his death in 1980, at the hands of a captain of the Salvadoran National Guard. This murder unleashed a virulent wave of terror never seen in the tiny Central American country, which forever marked Mrs. Osegueda-Rosa.  Once safely in Canada, and following her vocation as a teacher, Carmen attended Centennial College of Applied Arts of Toronto, where she graduated as a preschool educator. Since 1996, Carmen has practiced her profession, and since then she has been registered as an active member of the Ontario College of Professional Early Childhood Educators.  Due to her empathy with the pain experienced by those seeking political refuge in Toronto, Mrs. Osegueda-Rosa has become one of the strongholds of the Community of San Lorenzo.