By LINDA SMITH

With tongue in cheek I have been known to grouse that Bono has focused the world’s philanthropic attention on Africa – because my organization happens to work with impoverished villages in Central America. And though I’d have preferred a rock star knocking on my door, it’s tens of thousands of children detained at our border that have now brought our attention to our neighbors to the south.

Since late last year, more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have tried to cross into the United States. At least 10 percent of them have ended up in California, and many of those in Los Angeles and surrounding cities.

As the executive director of Reading Village – a non-profit organization that empowers youth to eradicate illiteracy and lead their Guatemalan communities out of poverty – I am dismayed by the short-sightedness of our national policy on immigration. According to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, “Enforcement has been the dominant focus and concern driving immigration policy for more than 25 years.” In 2012 alone, the United States spent nearly $18 billion on its immigration enforcement agencies – surpassing spending on the FBI; Drug Enforcement Agency; Secret Service; U.S. marshals; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives combined! Yet, here we are.

In light of this data, I can only conclude one thing: addressing this national crisis requires looking beyond our border.

Until every child has at the very least the opportunity to lead a self-sustaining life, youth will keep crossing the border. No amount of immigration enforcement is going to stop the flow. We must look upstream.

The Guatemalan government, mired in racism, corruption and the influence of drug traffickers, spends less than 3 percent of its GDP on education. And precious little of it reaches the indigenous Mayans who comprise more than half of Guatemala’s population.

In their schools, there are no books. Poorly paid teachers only sometimes show up and rote memorization takes the place of actual learning. In rural villages, half the population is illiterate and families earn as little as $4 a day. Parents go into debt to buy their children the textbooks and uniforms they need for school, and when they can’t pay it off, they face merciless collectors who threaten, extort and kidnap family members to get what they want.

As a result, parents are faced with two unbearable choices: take their children out of school to save money and earn extra from their labor, knowing this will leave their kin with a legacy of poverty, or risk it all and send them to the United States where they might have a chance at a better life.

These parents are not ignorant of how dangerous and expensive it is to travel through Mexico and across the Rio Grande into the desert. That they would make this decision reflects just how desperate they are to secure a better life for their beloved children.

If there is any good news in this story, it is that over the last 25 years the field of philanthropy has experienced a bursting forth of new ideas, moving away from doing for others (and maintaining a state of dependency) toward empowering others to do for themselves.

I’ve worked in Guatemala since 2007, and year after year I witness the transformation of voiceless and invisible teens finding their self-worth and confidence as they read to the children in their own community. Seeing the impact they have on the young students and learning about the social, economic and political structures that keep their communities locked into poverty shifts the teens’ self-identity from victim to capable contributor. Where once they were passive recipients of the lives they were born into, I watch as they take action to transform their community. They graduate high school (unlike 90 percent of their peers), find professional employment, go on to university and reinvest in their towns.

I don’t know how to solve the seemingly intractable problems of the Guatemalan government. But if Reading Village’s work is successful, then I’m confident there will be a generation of local grassroots leaders who will.

The opinions on U.S. immigration policy are as diverse as the children fleeing to our border. Mayor Eric Garcetti has made admirable efforts to protect their welfare in light of the horrendous conditions from which they are fleeing, but other cities haven’t been as forgiving.

All I know is this: The solution to the immigration crisis lies not in building a bigger wall at our border or funneling millions of dollars to ineffectual government agencies in Guatemala, but in building partnerships with impoverished communities to create an environment from which youth don’t want or need to flee.

Linda Smith is executive director of Reading Village in Boulder, Colo., a non-profit that combines scholarship, leadership and literacy to alleviate poverty in rural Guatemala. She is an alumna of UCLA.