Opening doors to 2000 bright futures in Mexico

It is a pleasure for us to let you know about what we have been working on during these past few months.
First of all, we have had the 7th and 8th season of Your Online Club. Our team has become expert in offering their workshops and services virtually, and children have been more participative, always asking when we will see and hug each other again.

The Program’s second generation began a few weeks ago, with a dozen participants. This project aims to strengthen not only the children's reading and writing skills, but it is also a useful tool for them to channel their emotions and feelings. We are very happy indeed to have a second generation.

As part of the Children's Day celebrations, and thanks to MixUp, the Club delivered gifts to our members. This event had all relevant security measures, and it was the first event that had children present again. Although their visit was brief, the kids were happy to return to the Club, to run around and play together.

Finally, we want to share with you that during these last weeks we have been preparing to reopen our Club. We have come up with security protocols and sought the guidelines requested by local authorities to ensure that members return as safely as possible.

During times like these, we would especially like to thank you for your continuing support. Please keep encouraging your friends and families to also join our great family. Help us open the door to an even greater future!

This week we celebrated our second anniversary. Even when 2020 turned out very differently than what we planned, we still are very proud and happy with our team at the Club for how they managed this challenging past year. And, of course, we thank you for your support throughout this year. 

Now, let us tell you all about our last months of work in the Club! 

November last year we launched a fantastic new project for our Boys and Girls. Together with the United States-Mexico Foundation for Science (FUMEC) and the US Embassy we have started an intensive 2-year English course with 30 of our teenager Club members. We are so grateful to FUMEC and the US Embassy for providing this amazing possibility of learning the English language and thereby opening so many more paths to a greater future for our Club Kids.

In December we organized our first online art auction called “Art for Kids”, with all proceeds going to Club operation. Seventeen talented Mexican artists generously donated their work in benefit of the Club. The highlight of the night was the sale of one of our Club Kids paintings. He was very emotional and ecstatic on receiving the news of having sold his first painting ever. This event showed us yet again how even in difficult times we are all capable of creating positive and life-changing experiences if we put our heart to it.  

At the end of the year, we were able to invite our Club Kids, with all the sanitary measures in place, to pick up a special food basket for Christmas including a gift hamper for each Kid. Many of the Kids do not receive anything for Christmas, especially this Christmas, due to the increased loss of jobs and income in our community. Our committed and caring team personally got to wish the Kids and their families Happy Holidays during the handout of the hampers. This meant the world to every single family and showed us yet again how a small effort can go such a long way. We are so grateful to all the help we have received in making this possible, especially from the GlobalGiving community. 

Finally, we are very happy to inform you that in these past few months we have been able to increase our Online Club participation. In January and February, we were able to reach up to 425 kids with our online afternoon activities. Especially the sports activities are very popular with our Kids and are a great way to get them moving despite being locked up at home due to the ongoing pandemic. Our objective is to increase the numbers of Kids that we can reach, not only with sport and academic activities but most importantly with emotional support capsules. 

Especially in times like these we would like to thank you for your ongoing support. Please encourage your friends and families to join our great family too and to help us open the door to more great futures!  

Looking forward to reporting back to you very soon.  

Stay safe and healthy! 

We in the Club hope that you and your families are safe in these especially challenging times.

The last week of March, the Club de Niños y Niñas de Tecamac & Ecatepec had to close its doors in order to keep our Kids safe from the Corona Virus. However, this doesn’t mean we have stopped working, on the contrary our whole team has been making great efforts in order to keep in touch with the Boys and Girls, their families and the community in general.

Teachers have made sure that no Kid is alone during this time, and through messages, calls, challenges and activities via social media, they have been in touch. These calls have also helped staff members  to keep themselves informed as to what the families are going through and to generate alliances in order to help them; so far telephonic psychological accompaniment and helping families receive basic food parcels have been the main contributions of the Club’s team members.

In response to the needs derived from the contingency, we have built a campaign to produce and sell re-usable face masks. 5 Women from the community, most of whom have lost their jobs due to the pandemia, are producing the masks. This not only helps them generate an income for their families but also helps them in feeling useful in these difficult times. For every 10 masks sold we donate 5 masks to the vulnerable members of our community. The earnings through selling the face masks will help us to secure some of the Club’s operational costs.

In the last couple of months, we have had the chance to work on our long awaited kitchen. This beautiful space will soon be filled by our Kids learning all about healthy lifestyle and cooking themselves. A full-time cook from the community will also be able to produce a warm daily meal for our Kids with the help of volunteer moms giving back to their Club.

The last couple of weeks have been especially exciting and groundbreaking for us, as we have started to formally operate our Online Club. This is an online space where we are able to reach our Kids in their homes and keep them occupied and learning with all the online activities on offer such as ¨Reading to dream, ¨Martial Arts, ¨Dancing to love yourself¨, ¨Psychology Capsule¨, ¨Design and Imagine¨ and ¨Emotional Intelligence¨. Mondays to Fridays, from 4-6pm our kids can attend any of these Zoom meetings with their teachers and friends. 

Our hope for the near future is to continue developing the Online Club and making Internet and a digital device available to every single Club Kid.

Especially in times like these we would especially like to thank you for your support!

Looking forward to reporting back to you very soon.

Stay safe and healthy!

During February at the Club de Niños y Niñas de Tecamac & Ecatepec, we had the visit of the company Hoghart Mexico in which they did a corporate volunteering through a session of one hour of storytelling with the 6 to 8 years old children. Before this activity the social corporate responsibility area collected books with the company collaborators on different topics focused on primary school. The total of books collected were 200.

We also grew our team for the 2020 operation! 5 new people join the Club de Nios y Niñas Tecamac & Ecatepec team, this will give us the huge opportunity of serve and impact more children by opening doors to great futures and helping them become the leaders of tomorrow. Right now, we are attending 250 kids each day.

Last February 14^th we celebrated our first anniversary of the Tecamac & Ecatepec Club, our kids made an incredible presentation of each program. It was a great honor for our team to watch de evolution of our community and celebrate with them the accomplishments we had in one year. We share a huge and delicious 1ft anniversary cake!

Our new members went through a couple of “test weeks”, in which they experienced the different workshop of the 5 BGC intervention programs that we work with. The main idea is that they can choose up to six of the workshops that they liked the most in order to develop their skills based on their own preferences and their capacity of making their own decisions.

Finally, the entire operational team was trained for four days in  “Pedagogy of Emergency” modules, in order to achieve a better intervention with children that have been trough traumatic and extreme violence situations and how to give them a better and quality attention.

Thank you so much for all your support!