Firstly, we are going to visit the brand new mobile school team in Mexico City.
During a previous visit to Mexico, our facilitators went on a prospection visit at Yolia Niñas de la Calle. After a positive evaluation, we decided to breathe new life into an existing mobile school. In Caracas, Venezuela one of our partner organisations stopped working with the mobile school a few years ago, so we are really happy that it found a new home in the capital city of Mexico.
Yolia Niñas de la Calle wants to go out on the streets three times a week to work with the children of (ambulant) market vendors at several locations in the city. They already joined the other Mexican mobile school team during a street session to gain some experience and are now looking forward to really getting started themselves. During the implementation training, they will learn everything there is to learn about the mobile school and the educational materials, so they can increase their impact on the streets.
After the training in Mexico City, the Mobile School facilitators will visit the other Mexican mobile school team in Querétaro, a three hour-bus ride away from the capital. Since 2013, the team of Alimentos para la Vida has consistently been pulling their mobile school to the streets five times a week to raise the self-esteem of street-connected children and youth.
Currently, the new government is being very repressive towards people living and working on the streets. Entire markets are swept clean when nobody is there. Regular police patrols ensure that nobody comes back to the ‘clean’ areas. Instead of looking for constructive solutions for the local social challenges, they relocate them to other areas of the city. The mobile school team, however, keeps working in all the sectors they usually visit. They remain the first point of contact for the local community.
