Oaxaca Street Children Grassroots
Photo via Silver Planet
Jodi Bauman first visited Oaxaca (Pronunciation: \wä-ˈhä-kä\), Mexico on vacation. She was charmed by the city’s intricate architecture and the dramatic landscape, but disturbed to see young children, clearly living in poverty, selling trinkets and candy in the streets day and night.
Jodi feared that these children would never be able to break out of poverty’s vicious cycle without an education. Wanting to do something, Jodi started by sponsoring individual children, helping them enroll in school and paying for school supplies and uniforms. She persuaded others to do the same, and in 1996, the Oaxaca Street Children Grassroots child sponsorship program was created.
Jodie moved to Oaxaca and chartered a sister organization, El Centro de Esperanza Infantil (the Center of Hope for Children). In addition to their child sponsorship program, the Center also has a children’s soup kitchen and a volunteer nurse.
If you have ever wondered how you can make a real impact on a child’s life and future, there is a way. Please read on.
Currently, the program is looking to make physical improvements to its facilities so that it can continue to serve the many children that it helps each day. Right now, the roof of the main building is in danger of falling in and other improvements need to be made as well to serve the more than 600 children who are now served by the center. This letter from the organization’s President explains in the most compassionate way, the situation at hand for these children and how deeply meaningful your help would be. In tandem with this explanation is the promotion of Rebecca Brooks’ Benefit Auction on Recuerda mi Corazon, to help Raise money to Raise The Roof! Please visit her blog and her Gallery of Hope and Make a Bid for your Support Today. The auction ends Sunday, June 12, at 6pm.
Dear Friends:
I write to ask for your support in “raising the roof” – literally and figuratively – on a building in Oaxaca, Mexico. This building is home to a vitally important resource: El Centro de Esperanza Infantil. The 2,500 square-foot building houses a program that enables hundreds of impoverished children in Oaxaca to attend school.
The U.S.-based organization that funds the Centro de Esperanza Infantil, or CEI, is called Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots. It was founded in the late-1990’s by an extraordinary American couple who, while vacationing in Oaxaca, were troubled by the number of children they saw begging in the streets during the day instead of attending school. When they began to ask why, they learned that while education was free, the Mexican system requires children to provide their own books, uniforms and other supplies. They were determined to help fund these expenses – child by child – and since then, that vision has been realized through a sponsorship program and through the establishment of CEI.
When it was first purchased in 2000, CEI was a large, crumbling colonial structure that had no interior walls and a pile of debris in its center. It has now been renovated room by room, and today it is a cheerful and lively center with a library, a lunchroom, a nurse’s office, a computer center and several administrative offices. A sunny central patio is the hub of the center, constantly full of children doing their homework, working with volunteer tutors or just playing with friends.
CEI has literally changed the lives of the children who have been able to complete their education and have moved out of dire poverty. Now, more than ten years since it first opened, the building’s roof is in danger of falling – and we’re looking for funds to “raise the roof” and make improvements to the building necessary to serve even more children. Please help us maintain this safe space for the nearly 600 children who are currently served by the organization, and contribute anything you can to our “Raise the Roof” campaign for 2011.
My sincerest thanks,
W. David Slaymaker, President
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SHRINE BENEFIT: Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots
Rebecca, of recuerda mi corazon, is the host for a Shrine Auction to Benefit Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots. As you can see from reading the testimony above Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots is a well -established nonprofit whose goal is to make sure that children who normally have no opportunity to have an education finally have that chance because of generous people like you reading this right now. Twenty-Seven Amazing Artists whose skill, generosity and love knows no bounds have come together to offer their best work ~ work that carries with it the future of children and the compassion of strangers that will soon become friends. Won’t you travel over to Rebecca’s blog, register at the Gallery of Hope and Feast your eyes on the beauty that awaits you there. You will be so glad that you did. The button below will also lead you to the post for the Auction benefit. The auction began on Sunday, June 5, 2011 and ends Sunday June 12, 2011 at 6 pm. Thank you.
Que tu corazón sea bendito por su amabilidad!
~Noelle Renee
Click on this link and it will take you to the Auction post. Thank you!
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