Interact District 5495 Ambassadors to Mexico: Day 3: Team Capitan: Ciara Coleman, Prescott HS Interact Club. Ciara volunteered to be Team Capitan for the day, and it turns out – this was the perfect day. Ciara is very intelligent and she observes, processes and then she “takes action”, certainly a future Rotarian.
Continue reading to hear from Ciara’s own words, the story of “taking action” to Create Hope in the World. Today we went to La Jugarreta. It was a beautiful boutique/cafe in Tepoztlán. The owners of La Jugarreta started a program devoted to helping kids through secondary school (grades 7-9) because many of the youth in this area drop out after 6th grade to help their families financially.
When María, one of the women in charge of this program, first moved to Tepoztlán with her young son, she saw that there wasn’t a whole lot of things to keep the teenagers busy. She wanted to change that because she knew that her son would one day grow up here and some day become one of those teenagers.
She got a group together of 10 kids that were at risk of dropping out from the local primary schools. The kids will stay in the program all throughout secondary school. New kids come in each year, but it is a selection process to ensure the effort is a two way street. In the beginning, they didn’t have a recipe to run this program, but knew any program cannot be developed FOR the kids, but rather developed BY the kids. So they just sat down and talked to the kids. They believe that kids have the right to be heard and the right to participate. The kids were able to express the problems that they had at school and at home. They were also able to come up with their own solutions. They were not told how to fix it, they were given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own education, allowing them for feel more independent.
Some of the solutions included taking the kids on an outing to include people from all areas instead of having only the kids nearby the cafe come to La Jugarreta. The women that run this program found ways to accommodate the kids so that their needs were always met. Sometimes this meant helping the kids with math or enabling them to just play basketball. This program has truly made an impact. Words that come to mind: Inclusion, community, belonging, desire, trust and teamwork.
The original 10 kids went on to secondary and even high school. Some went to college. Currently, the program has over 20 kids in it. All of these kids are now able to have an education past 6th grade instead of dropping out. Because the kids learned how to speak up about their issues, they also learned how to convince their parents that education is the right choice and it pays off. The parents got to understand that their kids were better off learning and developing their future. The parents also had an opportunity to attend workshops to learn how to better help their kids. Overall, the women that run this education program have made a wonderful difference in the community.
Learning about the impact that La Jugarreta makes is inspiring because making change is as simple as seeing a problem and seeking a solution. Buenas noches!