A LITTLE WORM FOR FATHER´S DAY

This year, to celebrate Father’s Day at San José Center (located in Ajusco, south of Mexico City), we conducted a special activity with the teachers, parents, and children. Its purpose was twofold: first to show the parents all the skills their children have acquired throughout the school year, by means of early stimulation, and, secondly, to involve the parents themselves into a teaching role in the development of their little ones. This demonstration involved making a little worm using a recyclable material, egg cartons, plus paint, glue, and a bit of imagination.  With this simple worm, the parents appreciated how the instructors were developing the psychomotor activity, especially the sense of touch, in their little ones. Fathers and mothers enjoyed creative moments interacting with their children and appreciated their most recent learning experiences.

WHERE 70 USED TO EAT, 100 NOW EAT

With the beginning of the new school year in San José Child Development Community Center in Jardines de San Juan Ajusco, Mexico City, we have begun a campaign to fill the classrooms of the center to maximum capacity. We are walking down each one of the streets in the neighborhood in search of children younger than six years old who are not using the center.  We want to know who is not coming, and make it possible for them to benefit from the services that our project offers for complete development in early childhood.

In this process of going from house to house, we arrived at the home of Elvira, a skinny woman of slight stature and tan skin with one of those special smiles that makes others smile. Her precarious home has a canvas roof already quite rotted by the rain and stinging sun found at these high altitudes. The walls are made of unfinished wood and an entirely dirt floor. Like the majority of homes of this haphazard neighborhood settlement, they don’t have electricity, potable water or a sewer system. Now that the season of cold and constant rains is beginning, they have to look for a way to protect themselves. They stay warm with a wood fire inside of the house and they use a bucket to collect the water from the leaks in the roof in order to wash themselves.

Elvira lives with her spouse and four year old son, Emilio.  Emilio is always with his mother, who goes to work washing dishes in the home of a woman of the same neighborhood.  The boy doesn't go to any sort of school, center or daycare.  In our conversation with Elvira, we realized that the reason she doesn’t take her child to the center is because of fear that one day Emilio will be kidnapped .

At the beginning of our visit, Elvira appeared to be full of the doubts and anxieties of a mother worried about being separated from her child during the day in what can sometimes be a dangerous neighborhood.  And because of this, she did not want to accept the invitation to bring Emilio to the San José Center so that he could enjoy the benefits of a preschool education along with the child nutrition program.  But, in the end, she told us that she wanted the best for her child and that she will fight so that Emilio has the best opportunities possible for a quality of life that is better than the one they are presently living.

Over a two month period we have managed to invite Emilio along with other boys and girls of the neighborhood around the San José center who are now receiving education, food, and psychological attention, establishing the foundations for their future as persons and members of their society.

At the end of the past year, there was an average of 70 children attending the San José Center. Now with the new campaign, we have already reached 99 students enrolled for the 2014-2015 year.  We have learned that in these social conditions, it is not enough to just open the doors so that these children can benefit from our project.  It is necessary to go door to door in order to invite them and help the parents to understand the benefits for their children’s education, nutrition, and development.

As long as there are still families like that of Elvira and Emilio who have to live in such unhealthy and dangerous conditions, we will continue promoting  educational development and improving the quality of life for families who most need it in Jardines de San Juan Ajusco.

Yomaira Cordero and Fany Arguello