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Marly Cardona Moz
//May 9, 2023
Marly Cardona Moz
Chief of Communications
Baltimore City Department of Transportation
What is your most significant accomplishment?
Most significantly it was fundraising to purchase a permanent home for a small free children’s library I own and operate with my mother, Biblioteca Luz. In 2012, we founded the first therapeutic lending library in El Salvador, located in an area with the highest homicide rate of children under the age of 17 in a red gang zone. Half a dozen nonprofits had failed before us at surviving in this neighborhood.
Previous NGOs were either forced out by the gangs, protested by the local religious organizations or overstayed a welcome in a borrowed space. Many of these NGOs had significant financial backing. Biblioteca Luz was a gesture of love and we had no reason to believe we could make it. Except, my mother Luz Margarita Moz, or Niña Margo as they know her, is Salvadoran and was trained in teaching children with severe trauma and learning disabilities for more than 20 years in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
In 2022, we bought a permanent home for the library. Now the children who work in the food and fish markets, the teenagers who aren’t allowed to matriculate into local schools because of their family’s affiliations, and even the local street pups “los aguacateros,” have a home in Biblioteca Luz. This is the professional accomplishment that brings me the greatest joy, peace and pride.
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This is an honoree profile from The Daily Record's Top 100 Women awards. Information for this profile was sourced from the honoree's application for the award. |
