Makarios founder 
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This is Sharla Megilligan, the founder of Makarios. She is a problem-solver by nature, and laid a foundation for an organization centered on Jesus, relationship, resourcefulness, and excellence.
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She was only 28 when she took the leap of faith to start Makarios. It was 2004, and she had lived in the DR for years, falling in love with the people and the culture.

​In her time living in the DR, Sharla learned that a low percentage of kids were going to high school and an even lower percentage of students were graduating. Public schools in the big cities were decent, but in the rural areas, they were unacceptable. Public school teachers would be overflowing with 40 students to a class, and very limited supplies. Students were not thriving in the classroom, they were just going through the motions. In the early year of Makarios, there were students who had attended public school for years and couldn’t write their name.
Sharla researched the need over the four years that she taught at Santiago Christian School and had a notebook full of information to get started. She went to grad school and got a masters in public affairs with an emphasis in nonprofit management. A friend of hers offered a $5000 matching grant to get Makarios off the ground, so she spread the word raised the $5000 to match. She started there. That was enough to cover Brian and Bethany’s (Makarios' first teaching staff members) pay and her own flight to the DR. Many of those gifts became monthly. They collected school supplies and showed up in the communities to teach after some planning meetings with parents and local leaders.

The school began as a tutoring program to supplement public school education for students during the half day they were not in school. In a leaning house in Pancho Mateo, students, teachers, and surrounding communities witnessed beautiful things happen in that house. Our very own Cakito was one of those students.

Over the next few years, Sharla and the Makarios team ​planted roots with people in the communities. They learned from people around them, they built relationships, they prayed. Eventually, they decided to open up the Makarios school in the center of the communities they were serving. That handful of students has grown to over 170, and our staff has multiplied just as quickly. In addition to our ever-growing school, we have extended our programs to the families and communities of our students, and to American churches with a desire to have a better global understanding and take that to their home communities.