Health and education for children in Chiapas

In the last months of the year, our intervention with children in early childhood in Chiapas consisted of recognizing and strengthening health strategies through leading participation.

In the last three months of the year, changes in government took place in the country, with the local government of San Cristóbal de las Casas and the state government in Chiapas beginning to criminalize working children, ignoring the cultural, family, personal and economic value that it means for girls and boys to collaborate with their families in work. According to the reality of local violence, Melel identifies decent work as a projection factor in the recruitment of girls, boys and adolescents.

Reinforcing sessions in public spaces through games and meaningful learning activities is important to generate safe meeting spaces. Listening to their words, their needs can be met through activities and free play, strengthening their participation and encouraging collective protagonism, where little by little they recognize themselves as a group and learn to relate to other children of their age. 

During 2024, more than 57 children between 2 and 6 years old participated in educational activities, accompanying families working in three public markets.

We invite you to follow us on our social networks @melelxojobal and learn much more about our work.

On behalf of the entire Melel Xojobal team, we wish you a Happy New Year 2025, and we also appreciate your constant solidarity for this project, we hope to count on it again this year.

Our best wishes to you and yours.

Faced with violence and the lack of safe spaces for children and adolescents in the city, we have carried out a training process so that they can narrate how they live, what they do, what they work on and express their needs, desires and proposals to improve their work and recreation space.

For more than a month, we worked with photography, video and audio tools, to be able to capture the most emblematic spaces of their work. It is important that from early childhood, their feelings about space are taken into account, since there are fewer and fewer opportunities for games and recreation.

It is necessary to promote the identification of emotions from early childhood, in order to create tools for dialogue and assertive communication in times of stress, teamwork and eliminate gender stereotypes from a young age.

The result of this process was a photographic exhibition in the city center, where for a month, the photographs taken by the children were displayed, to share their vision with more people and raise awareness: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/Mcxj1PnapusNs1E2/?mibextid=WC7FNe

In the following link, you can see the entire process in the three markets on video: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/r45qmFj3DDRwzG7G/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Finally, the audios are available (in Spanish): https://www.facebook.com/share/v/8EsCkArazsruom1D/

We invite you to follow us on our social networks @melelxojobal and learn much more about our work.

On behalf of the entire Melel Xojobal team, we appreciate your constant solidarity for this project and we hope to continue counting on it. Rest assured that it is correctly distributed among the population served.

Greetings to you and yours.

Thank you.