BIENVENIDOS A SU CASA!
The last time we spoke with you we invited you to our non-carnival party ! Do you remember it? We really want to thank you because thanks to you our little girls are able to continue their therapy and to take off their masks!
Yes but then I thought: I didn’t give the address to come and visit us! That’s why today we want to invite you to our home: we want you to see and feel Puerta Abierta!
Have you ever been in our wonderful country? I was just wondering… I write you all the time but I think I never introduced our city and myself! You have to be really angry with me! But don’t worry: this time is the right one, you’ll not be disappointed!
So are you ready? Pack the luggage and close your eyes: you’re taking off for Queretaro.
Hi! Welcome home! You’ve just arrived to Puerta Abierta I.A.P, here you have your home and our girls are really happy to meet the wonderful human beings who allows them to continue studying and living with their “mothers” Lucy and Gris.
Probably you’re thinking what does Puerta Abierta mean and who are Lucy and Gris; right, let’s start from the beginning. Literally Puerta Abierta means “open door”, this is the name our founders Constantina Duran Robertson (you can call her Connie, as she likes) and Guadalupe Rodriguez (Lupita for friends) gave to the institution when, just like you, twelve years ago they decided to open their hearts to the millions of abused children in Mexico ; so they took action and built the foster home which today you’re visiting. But then, much before having to look for donors like you, they had to confront with the decision of who should be taking care of the children. And they had the luck to find Lucy and Gris. Lucy is the one who is probably opening the door for you and welcoming you with a big smile while Gris is more shy and I’m sure she’s in the kitchen cooking a wonderful “enchiladas” in order for you to eat some really good Mexican food.
Lucy and Gris are our angels coming from the sky because they also have a family of their own, but nonetheless they work hard to love and grow these little girls. Just to give you an idea, Gris wakes up at 5 a.m. in the morning to reach the foster home and Lucy lives with them all the time. They make sure the girls go to school and do their homework, they listen to their hearts and look through their eyes. Yes you’re right , they also scold them because I’m sure right now one of them doesn’t want to prepare the table!
Yes, the table! It’s time to eat! Ready to try the best enchiladas in the world?? Grab a seat , the girls are already in the kitchen waiting for you ( pay attention: if you decide to seat close to Angeles or Maria, our twins , they will not stop talking and making you a thousand questions!) .
We “eat , pray , love “ because we had the blessing to have food also today , because you were with us and because Gris and Lucy have filled this place with love and peace.
We hope you enjoy the meal and please don’t leave: there so many things we want you to show here in Mexico. Please stay, help us so that these girls can continue in their studies and hope for better future.
You’re room is on the right; please tell us if you need something.
Have a good nap and when you wake up we’ll be still here saying THANK YOU!!!
With love
Puerta Abierta I.A.P
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Hello there! How are you doing? Already back from your carnival party ?
Do you know what Carnival is?It’s a Christian holiday in which people wear masks and costumes during many different celebrations, allowing them to lose their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Well yes, they lose their individuality because of their mask; as we all do sometimes during life. Think about social networks, for example: Facebook shows thousand of smiling faces, as if the world was always happy! Oh God! How good would it be if it were true. But the truth is that we wear a mask to be part of society because we are social animals, they say we born to be part of it all.
Suddenly you don’t know who you are; you can just remember your character and continue playing it.
What does this mean to us? To our foster home? To our little girls? Mostly we receive abused children, they always wear a mask called “ it doesn’t matter, I don’t care.” To find a way to get rid of this attitude is not easy.
For example, we just received in Puerta Abierta a little girl called Belen. She just turned eight years old and guess what? It was the first time she saw a birthday cake. She couldn’t believe everyone was there just to celebrate her birthday. Moreover, she is not able to conquer people’s love. She steals things from the other girls to give it to someone else in order to please him or her. She is literally living an “heart-quake”; when we received her she was happy to finally be in a safe place, but now after a couple of months she seems to have forgotten what she went through and she invents wonderful - made-up - stories about her mom.
Belen is our little girl and we are starting to work with her as we did with the others. We provide her love, true love. This is our magic ingredient. And besides that, we are looking for a good psychologist to help her mind, body and heart find peace and order. She’s attending a bilingual school where they really care about her feelings and this is possible just because of you and your help.
Thanks to you we can work very hardly every day to help our children to lower their masks in order to find themselves.
You could say that we work for a non-carnival party! A party where everyone of us doesn’t need to wear any mask!
You’re invited of course!
Thank you so much for keeping us dreaming !
With all the love
Puerta Abierta I.A.P
Dear Santa
You’re almost here and we want to thank you. It was a wonderful year, it was a year full of joy and tears. Yes, we are grateful also for the difficult moments we faced; because we learned that happiness doesn’t exist without sadness and we also learned that tears and suffering were very important to us in order to grow strong as trees.
Santa, now we are trees… yes you got it right; do you know why? Because we are putting down our souls like roots in the ground . We think we feel better every day , we think our hearts received a lot of love and comprehension during this year; so what? Thanks Santa, you made it possible because you gave us what we asked ymonth GlobalGiving is matching any ou in the last few years: peace, respect and a family.
As you know, dear Santa, here in Mexico a lot of people need your help: half of the Mexican population live below the poverty line. Often living in poverty, Mexican children are vulnerable to violence both in the home and at school. Violence experienced at school has dramatic consequences because it pushes children to abandon their education in order to look for a job. Furthermore street children also find themselves victims of violence at the hands of their employers or even traffickers who exploit them.
As we were talking to you Santa, we were lucky because we found a new home through Puerta Abierta I.A.P where all the people which are working with and for us give us all we need in order to feel happy and loved. They bring us therapies with psychologists as well as a quality education, which will help us to have a future: now we know that we can dream even if we suffered abuse and abandonment. Now we know we can trust people, now we know that after all we can hope and love ourselves.
Please Santa , we don’t need dolls or games (even if we really like them) ; we just need to dream! Make our wish come true: make people continue to help us with their invaluable donations!
This month Globalgiving will match recurring donations for our project ! Tell all the kind donors to DONATE a little so we can reach our dreams!
https://www.globalgiving.org/dy/v2/pe/project-edit/edit-page-1.html?project.projId=9451
Hopefully one day we will help back someway, as we wish. For the moment, Santa, bring them our Christmas gift too: a big hug and smile from all the children they helped.
The girls of Puerta Abierta I.A.P
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As Mercedes tells us now “I was born in a very poor home, we suffered hunger and violence. My mother is schizophrenic and was sometimes violent; my father had no money for her medical treatment. I was taken apart legally from my home and taken to foster home care at 3 as they told me my life was in danger. This orphanage / foster home took good care of me but nobody adopted me so I was taken to Puerta Abierta´s foster home at age 8.“
56.7 % of Children who have suffered violence will repeat the violence cycle if not properly treated. In Puerta Abierta we work with a loving family model that takes care of emotional, physical, academic spiritual and social needs of our girls. This model encourages them to become independent, responsible and self-sufficient so they can build a nonviolent family.
But Mercedes was not able to handle the violence and abandonment she had suffered and kept telling us “ It is unfair, my mother never hurt me, they (DIF: Legal Government area that protects children) are telling lies “. Neither her father nor mother fought to get her back, at that time they just were not present.
Puerta Abierta always believed in her, we got her to learning therapies, tutoring and emotional support, we kept supporting all her needs, at some points we thought she wouldn’t finish elementary school as she did no progress. She was always frustrated and had disruptive conducts and bad temper. Lucy, the “mother-caregiver“ kept supporting her against all odds, specially in her emotional needs, we all kept loving her and showing her how much we cared.
At age 15 she kept dreaming of a family she wanted, not the one she had, at this point Puerta Abierta´s team and all the specialists around Mercedes decided we had to confront her with reality. Assessed by a therapist Mercedes had one contact with her father in a very contained environment. After that meeting WHAT SEEMED IMPOSIBLE BECAME A REALITY, Mercedes got a straight A in math in her 2nd grade of secondary school. Since then Mercedes shows a personal motor that keeps her pursuing her dream. As she says “ I want to become a university graduate so I take care of medical treatment for my parents“ Mercedes has one more year to go before heading to University.
With all the support from generous donors and Puerta Abierta, Mercedes can now tell a successful story, we are very proud of Mercedes and grateful for your suport, as without you it wouldn’t be possible!
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Telling a story about life is not easy at all, describing you what we do every day could be easy and impossible at the same time, because we work with souls and feelings. Because our aim is to give hope and love. How to describe in words these concepts?
Our little girls arrived when they were just four years old and today they are normal kids with all the problems that you can imagine. How are the girls living in Puerta Abierta? They are just like our children , we want you to imagine them like your daughter or son. Only, with one difference: they have a big sorrow, they have been abandoned. Working with them means one has to be doctor of the heart. Working with them means one has to mother, educator and friend. Do you already know theirs names? I want to introduce you our precious girls: Moni the youngest, Angeles Maria and Lupita our twins, Ana Gaby, Mercedes, Juanita ,Karla and Margarita the oldest one.
Moni is sweet and really needs a lot of love , she needs to be hugged , she needs you to look at her… and Angeles …she speaks through her eyes.. she speaks a lot but her eyes are the real image of her heart… Karla pretends to be the coolest of all, can you imagine that!! Imagine them coming back from school every day laughing and screaming like every child, imagine them hungry after school running to ask : “what we are going to eat today” and then… try to smell our soup or pasta which Gris, one of our workers, is cooking for them. It’s a normal home’s scene isn’t it? But there is more behind their voice.. there is more behind their hunger. Because every day one of them starts to be sad without no reason , becomes angry without an apparent explication. Here is where our work starts: to think along their side, to love them, to hug them… to tell them that everything will be settle out for the best..
Today is Partner Rewards Bonus Day, we need your help to keep being doctors of the heart, all you donate today will be matched by 50% by GG while funds last !! Just click the link below and become part of this great project !
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/family-and-school-for-9-abandoned-girls-in-mexico/
Thank you with all our hearts.. we would like to finish this short letter with some words of one of our girls’ favorite songs …
“time stands still , beauty in all she is, I will be brave, I will not let anything , take away What’s standing in front of me , Every breath, Every hour has come to this.. One step closer..”
With all the best,
PUERTA ABIERTA I.A.P.
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