Empowering residents of a Tijuana squatter community
Partners: World Vision (an international relief and development agency)
Cause: Helping an impoverished community access educational and economic resources
The Creative Idea: Actually visiting and serving where your money goes
Amount: $100,000 over two years
The Situation:
According to the latest available data, 600,000 people arrive each year at the US/Mexico border from across Mexico and other Central American countries. Over the next 20 years, Mexican towns near the American border are anticipated to gain an additional 13.5 million people, doubling their current population. With the border crossing to the US becoming ever more imposing, the influx threatens to overwhelm the infrastructure of basic services.
This is especially true of the squatter communities of Tijuana, Mexico. One such community called Las Palms lacks health services, sanitation, electricity, recreation, and a host of things many of us take for granted. Education there consists of a dilapidated school with cardboard boxes tacked up as a ceiling, little to no school supplies, and teenage intern teachers.
In addition to these pressing concrete needs, there is in these communities the pervasive sense that they are abandoned. Government services ignore them and few residents feel able to press for more attention. Indeed, the fact that Las Palmas is situated only a half hour drive from downtown San Diego reinforces the sense that these people are all but invisible to the rest of the world.
World Vision is seeking to organize these residents and empower them to become a visible presence. Towards the government, the community is learning from World Vision how to access more basic resources. And the relief agency is empowering it to build its own community center, start a micro-credit movement, and improve its local school.
One of the squatter houses in Las Palmas
In addition to these pressing concrete needs, there is in these communities the pervasive sense that they are abandoned. Government services ignore them and few residents feel able to press for more attention. Indeed, the fact that Las Palmas is situated only a half hour drive from downtown San Diego reinforces the sense that these people are all but invisible to the rest of the world.
World Vision is seeking to organize these residents and empower them to become a visible presence. Towards the government, the community is learning from World Vision how to access more basic resources. And the relief agency is empowering it to build its own community center, start a micro-credit movement, and improve its local school.
Our Impact:
One of many community-building construction projects sponsored by local partner World Vision in Tijuana
Thought for our members’ own giving:
It’s probably impossible to physically connect with every one of the causes you support. But pick one to do so, especially one your family can touch in an ongoing way. Over time, this connection will be important for yourself, for your recipients, and especially for your children. For the latter especially, the dim awareness that their parents wrote a check to some place can instead become a shared experience of a family trip.
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