It started with a single school door.
Anny Morla was nineteen when she first stepped through it, not knowing that the school would grow around her, that she would grow with it. She was a first-grade teacher’s assistant then, young and eager, sweeping dust from wooden desks and grading the papers of eager learners. The walls of Shalom Evangelical School in the Dominican Republic stretched just far enough to hold its 105 bright-eyed students, brimming with possibility and joy. She did not expect to stay, but some places are built for more than their beginnings.
Growing Alongside the School
Anny moved through the school like a thread through cloth, stitching herself into its fabric — first as an English teacher, then as a high school computer teacher, then as the school secretary, all while studying early childhood education at night. The school grew, floor by floor, and so did she. The doors opened wider. More children came. One day, she was no longer just passing through; she had become part of the foundation.
In 1996, Rosa Adelia Zorrilla laid the first stone, though, as she recalls, it did not seem like much of a stone at all. “Today, our school looks big, but it was tiny,” Rosa remembers. “There wasn’t anything here.”
The school grew slowly. The first 105 students squeezed into small classrooms. And yet, somehow, there was always enough room. In 2008, the second floor was built. Then, the third. “At first, we were afraid to take such big steps of faith — but we knew the Lord was opening doors,” Rosa shares. In 2012, the school partnered with Edify, and it grew stronger. Four loans through Edify’s local lending partner, Coopaspire, added new classrooms, solar panels, and space to breathe. Training programs shaped the teachers. Education technology brought endless possibilities into the room. The school no longer just stood — it flourished.
True Flourishing
Anny has grown inside these school walls for more than a decade now. She has seen the way it changes people and the way it changes her. “What has impacted me the most is the growth, not just of the school, but my own growth since I first started here,” she reflects. “This center has become part of my family. My character has been forged in this place.”
The school has always been more than desks and whiteboards, more than grades and graduation ceremonies. “In these schools, you aren’t just giving education — you are giving the Word of God, sowing for the Kingdom,” Rosa explains. “If education isn’t Christ-centered, it doesn’t reach the heart, and society won’t change.”
Anny, now the General Coordinator, carries that mission forward. She sees it in the way families trust this place, in the way teachers stay, in the way the children return as adults, bringing their own little ones to walk through the same doors. “The most important factor in our growth has been the impact we’ve had on the community,” she says. “Families want their children to belong to this school because of the strong sense of care and belonging we offer.”
What started as a single door became a place of transformation and hope for Anny and for generations of learners to come.
