Empower Highly Outcast Children and Their Families

The last quarter of 2013, it was a good time to celebrate the traditional Christmas season with our children and Mayama families as well as months of progress and achievements in daily operation. In our Day Centre, The Back to School Program (BSP) managed to reinsert 6 street condition children into School.  . According to the annual report by UNICEF (2012); in Mexico 13.20% of children between 3 and 17 years, are out of school (6 million). Of these, which also work (and do not attend school) are 1, 173, 000. In this regard, it is important that programs as BSP continue, because “school dropout” is a common consequence in a context of lacks of educational, health and cultural opportunities that children of Mayama Struggle. We are very proud to tell you that 100% of Mayama´s Children are street free and back to school thanks to the innovative education model. 

Regarding the Day Center which develops Skills in 5 areas, we celebrate a HUGE achievement. With the support of Hewlett Packard Mexico and its employees, Mayama has new computer equipment that helps to works special educational methodologies in this area. “I THINK” develops cognitive skills to receive information, analyze it and solve problems. One way to achieve this is from a fun and educational software. Thank you very much to all the people through Global Giving who believe in this project.

 Parallel to that, we continue with the Community Program for children’s families of Mayama. In this quarter, one of the most important workshops was "Compromise and Responsibility". In this workshop we guide to moms in order to identify their dreams, and then, these dreams could turn them into goals and look for ways to accomplish them with a firm compromise. All this work was both, individually and collective where moms shared their stories and experience with each other.

 To end the year and celebrate Christmas season, we made a great “posada” (that is a traditional celebration in Mexico). It was especially for 180 children and their families, about 700 people. In January, we had a special delivery of toys for our children. It was a special time, not only to celebrate Christmas, but to close a successful year and receive a 2014 full of challenges and growth for Mayama. In this regard, we would like to share with you that in this month; we begin the “Coaching Phase” for children who have completed their process in Mayama for 3 years.

 What does this mean?, Is a special process to support the boys and girls who met at least 80% attendance, to receive scholarships to continue School, Evidence shows they are free of addictions, girls are free of early pregnancy, they are people who shows peaceful behavior to themselves and others, they build an audiovisual project with issues related to their community (problem statement and proposed to solve it) and have finally managed to design a life plan.

We believe that every child who comes to Mayama should have a specific life plan, in order to put into practice outside, all knowledge learned in the Day Center. We are very proud that 28 children of Mayama start the Coaching Phase to reproduce all the lessons learned, and become leaders in their own communities. We are very happy to launch this new phase, and at the same time, we can welcome new children that need the support of Mayama immediately.

Thank you very much for believing in Mayama!

Would you like to support one of our children in Coaching Phase? 

On this occasion, we are pleased to share the results of the last three months and tell you about two special events that are part of our Philosophy of Transparency: 1) the results report (activities during 2012) to our community and 2) to our donors. Regarding the daily operation of our Day Centre, the last three months have had great results for the Back to School Program (PRE for this acronym in Spanish), which managed to reinsert 40 children in the Regular School System (6 August, 25 September and 9 October). This is an important achievement if we remember that the current population treated at our Day Centre is 180 children, we are talking about almost a quarter (25 % approx.)

In reference to the importance of developing skills in 5 areas in our Day Centre, during July and August our Mayama kids participated in a Summer Course with the children of the Agentia employees (an alliance with Mayama AC). This was in order to share knowledge and feedback and also show the lessons learned between two different children’s perspectives of learning. We ended this enriching experience of the year's activities in the Day Centre with a clown show, which ended happily uniting these groups of children. In addition, as a complement to our educational program, the Hewlett Packard Volunteers delivered 180 schoolbags with school supplies to support our children and as a motivation to start the next school year with lots of energy.

Returning from the bye week, the Day Centre resumed its activities with Yoga for Children. This time with an innovative course called: “Dermo Optical Perception” (“Dermovisión” in Spanish). This technique aims to develop the mental abilities latent in human nature. It deals with the development of color perception through the skin. This mechanism is through the brain and nervous system. It is impressive what our Mayama Children are achieving.

Another workshop we can not fail to mention is the resilience workshop with our children, which is to develop the ability to face adversity (tragedy, threats, severe stress) and to overcome these through going through the process of feeling pain or emotional distress. From this they learn a lot and even emerge stronger from these events. Parallel to the Day Centre, this workshop was part of the Community Program, which took place with Mayama Families in 8 sessions, also working on personal and family strengths.

As a Non Governmental Organization, we are proud to share the Transparency and Institutional recognition (optimal level) for the second consecutive year, granted by the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (CEMEFI for this acronym in spanish). Among the aspects considered for this award are: compliance with legal and tax provisions established for NGO’s, transparency in the use of resources, and to have a sustainable and efficient organizational structure, as well as others. This is  an important point because only 14 associations in Jalisco obtained it.

In respect of our philosophy of transparency it is our duty to inform the general public, families and all the people who support the project about the results, developments and innovations that are obtained year by year in Mayama A.C. In this sense, on October 6th, we had our third report to the Community, attended by 70 of the 89 Mayama families.  Among laughing, integration dynamics and words of thanks, we could see that Mayama transforms realities and that it is well worth supporting this kind of project.

Finally, on the third anniversary celebration of our opening Day Centre Mayama October 30th we will have a special event to share the results of all of 2012 with our donors, volunteers and all of the institutions involved. To all our friends at Global Giving we also want to invite you to witness the changes that brought support.  Furthermore if they are not able to attend, we will be sharing the details of our next report in January.

Would you like to find out about our Day centre?. Get in touch.