By Luis Flores | Fundraiser
Dear Globalgiving donors,
Through this report we present to you our results of the first 4 months of 2017.
- Birth Certificate Annual Campaign
From February to the beginning of May, we launched the annual birth certificate campaign. The goal is to give a hand to indigenous families of the city, so their daughters and sons can obtain his/her birth certificate.
Chiapas is the state of Mexico with the highest percentage of people that don’t have his/her birth certificate and more and more kids are being born and not getting this vital document. This problematic situation reached the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas.
We face two of the causes of this problem: the incapacity to read of some people that block them to know the importance of the birth certificate and the way they could get it; and the language barrier cause the service at the public office is made in Spanish and lot of people at San Cristobal speak another indigenous language.
The campaign was promoted at markets and public spaces where children commonly work. What we did was walking on the street and with a speaker let everyone around know about the campaign. Also, we established direct conversation among people that show some interest and explained them what they needed to know. Lastly, we distributed flyers all over that explained how the campaign was going to happen.
We received persons through all these months at our installations. We explained the procedures in order to obtain the birth certificate and accompanied them till the end of it. Our staff includes tsotsil and tseltal speakers, the two most common languages at Chiapas.
We have forged a strong link with the civil registry office of the city and at 24 April one public official came at our installations and delivered all the birth certificates processed. We have achieved, at the moment, a total of 58 birth certificates. It is worth mentioning that, although our campaing is over, we continue this support and accompaniment all the year.
- Strengthening working children’s knowledge and social abilities
As you already know, the educative sessions we give to working children at their working places are one of the pillars of Melel Xojobal’s work.
At this point of the year, we have given at total of 49 educative sessions with an average duration of two hours each one, to a total of 179 working children.
This 49 educative sessions are part of the three Learning Circles we have performed. We remind you that we call “Learning Circle” at the set of educative sessions that has a specific thematic and purpose.
The three Learning Circles gave until now are:
a) See, Think and Act From the Family: This educative sessions took place at Melel Xojobal installations. With the project, the children made a critical analysis of their present on the basis of their own family.
b) Our Face: Conducted at Mercado Popular del Sur –Merposur- (Popular Market of the South). These sessions allowed working children to talk, reflect and recognize his/her individual and collective identity in order to see themselves as social actors of their environment.
c) Our Space and Its History. Completed at the center of the city, besides our Cathedral. With this project, we shared historical elements of our region in order to give them useful information that help them understand their present situation and to distinguish if their rights are being respected or not.
Besides this, we are working closely with 30 working children in order they successfully conclude his/her school year. We support them with a scholarship and provide them with the specific guidance they need. We have the best hopes on them.
- Thank you!
All Melel Xojobal is thankful with the support gave it by our donors. We are working hard hoping to reduce the social inequity, it is good to know that there are lots of people in the world with that idea in mind. And remember, children are not the future but the present and they have the right to participate in every decision making processes, since inside the family until public decision and policy making.
Don’t forget to visit our social networks and hopefully soon we will have or website translated into English.
Kind Regards
Luis Flores
Fundraiser
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