MY FIRST DAY OF CLASSES

A week before classes officially began, the staff and teachers at Centro San José undertook many activities. They relocated classrooms, arranged furniture, painted, retouched doors, cleaned the walls and floors and afterward decorated the preschool grounds. All was done with the purpose of offering a warm welcome to the children of Jardines San Juan (in the outskirts of Mexico City) when they arrived for their first day of class. We began the new school year 2015-2016 at the Centro Comunitario de Desarrollo Infantil San José bursting with happiness. For we know that each day we work on building values to form boys and girls to better the prospects of their future.

Our program focuses on serving young families, especially those newly arrived in the poor, urban district where we have the center. Many of these families have little experience with formal education and the expectations placed on the children and the parents. The center’s goals include basic preschool education, in-school meals and nutrition information for the families and much love and attention to develop, in the children and also their families, the behavioral skills needed for success in school.

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.

WE ARE ACTORS

“He who moves his body moves his heart; he who moves his heart, moves his emotions; he who is capable of becoming excited and is capable of exciting has found the key to the mystery-miracle of education,” (Carlos Pons, teacher and actor).

Following these beautiful words of Carlos Pons, the educators at Centro Comunitario de Desarrollo Infantil San José (St. Joseph Community Center for Child Development) in El Ajusco (México), played a dramatic and theatrical game with the children during the first trimester of the year, reenacting situations actually lived by these children. For example, a conflict on the playground or in the classroom would be portrayed by the children themselves.

The goal was to help the children understand their feelings and be able to name them. In this way, little by little, they learn to relate with one another and with the outside world in a more satisfactory and positive way.

To play a role produces changes in attitudes and conduct, promoting better comprehension toward the people who surround them.  In this way, they are being how to overcome obstacles in order to be happier in life.

Some of the students yelled enthusiastically, “We are actors!”

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

COURSE END IN THE SAN JOSÉ CENTER IN JARDINES DE SAN JUAN, EL AJUSCO (MEXICO D.F.)

The San José Center closed the year’s course with a graduation ceremony for the children.  Each year, when a group’s time in the center has come to an end in order to be able to continue onto primary school, we realize that those children have overcome a challenge, they’ve reached a new step. And in the San José Center, the teachers are left with the sensation of “mission completed.”  They see generations of these little ones pass by, but that won’t be forgotten.  Generations of boys and girls full of joy, innocence and much imagination.  Some day they will think back on their childhood and on the San José Center, which we hope they will remember as a time full of joy and care on the part of their teachers.  As the Spanish psychiatrist and author Enrique Rojas says, “Almost all of that which is human is in the childhood.  When this stage has been happy, healthy, full of affection and well focused, one comes out strong for everything.” 

"DÍA DEL NIÑO" IN THE SAN JOSÉ COMMUNITY CENTER, MEXICO CITY.

April 30 was the celebration of the Día del Niño (literally "Day of the Child") in the San José Community Center. In Mexico, the Día del Niño commemorates the Declaration of Children's Rights in 1959. 

Every day, 70 children come to this center located in El Ajusco, in the outskirts of Mexico City.  The center provides them with pre-school education, breakfast, lunch and medical care. 

In the Center there are also periodic talks with the fathers and mothers regarding reinforcing their children's education.  One topic that commonly emerges is domestic violence.  

On this occasion, the Center wanted to throw a nice party to commemorate the right of the children to have a happy childhood.  For this, the teachers dressed as clowns and organized a fair with different booths.  One was dedicated to makeup, where the children painted themselves as gatas, mice and Spider Man.  Another had a balloon game where they could win prizes.  And there was a dace floor.  

Later, the organizers hung up a large piñata full of candy.  After several falled attempts (as it should be!), finally the children were able to break it and all of them quickly filled their pockets.  For the gran finale, the cook had prepared an exceptional menu: pizza, natural fruit juice and horchata (a rice drink). 

It was a beautiful way to celebrate and highlight the rights of the smallest ones among us.