Educate and Empower Girls in Mexico

Welcome back everyone!

It’s springtime in Mexico and just like flowers, we are blooming with new information to share with you!  

We are in the final stages of the first year of work to empower indigenous girls in the rural town of Acaxochitlán.  As we mentioned before, we like to involve key player in the lives of these girls. Parents play an essential role in their children’s lives; therefore, we strive to have them actively participate during this and other programs. Workshops were carried out during December and January with a total of 390 parents participating.

A mother shared this with us:

“Well, how can I explain?  I liked that they talked to us about… about how to care for our children, because sometimes we say that we are mothers but we don’t know how to talk to them or how to talk to them about sexuality, because it’s not easy to speak so openly to our children. Well, because… those topics cause embarrassment, talking about those things, and I know that we have to talk about them to prevent other things, just like you mentioned during the conference. It is important that we talk about these important topics, like I told you. And this has me thinking about everything regarding my children, even about me…”

And continuing our work with teachers, we accompanied 21 of them during class while they replicated the program with their students.

Here a couple of thoughts that they shared with us:

“It was amazing! Excellent and change and… Why change? Because I challenged myself, because I had life skills and tools that were not structured and I came here to rearrange them.  I said I am 36 years old and during my life I’ve had many situations and I have learned to manage them, deal with them, with these skills, very easy and practical for my life, it has been excellent.”

“I created an environment of trust, where at least while they’re here, they feel safe and also, have empathy for others, care about others, care for their peers.  Have respect for both boys and girls, now it has become more grounded, you can see more unity amongst them.”

And most importantly, we want to share the voices of these girls:

“Self-awareness, I liked this one because the teacher said that we have to know ourselves, know our bodies, how we are and what happens when we use, for example, drugs, alcohol and things like that, that it can hurt us...”

“My father, he used to… say things and I wasn’t allowed to do things, he would scold me. Then he came to the workshop and they told him that when his child can’t do something… do things well, he doesn’t have to scold them, instead he can explain how to do them.  When I don’t understand my father and I don’t do things correctly, he explains the correct way to do it and helps me, he doesn’t scold me anymore.”

As we come to the end of the first year, we hope to share with you many more stories. We can’t wait to share more with you soon. Until next time!

Season’s greetings Global Givers!

We are back with news after having carried out workshops with teachers.  We have been well received and have counted with the unlimited support from teacher Eustolia Andrade who is supervisor to indigenous schools in the area. Teacher Eustolia has accompanied us during every step of the process, including facilitating access into hard to reach communities.

Our interactive workshops started in August and ended in October; we worked with 5^th and 6^th grade teachers for 30 hours, with a focus on topics such as, education, sexual and reproductive health, gender and gender based violence.

We want to share with you a few important testimonies from teachers that participated in the workshops.

Regarding education and their role as teachers:

“I feel like this workshop will help improve my work, because you cannot give what you don’t have and this will help me become a better person and be able to help my students.”

Male teacher, 37 years old

“I have learned that my students learn better when they are playing and moving, that’s why I only ask them to stay seated for a short while and after that, we move around more during activities, to support their learning process.”

Female teacher, 28 years old

Regarding how to approach difficult subjects and sexuality:

“I realized that I need to improve the way I express my emotions, because sometimes I can laugh when it is a serious subject and that could cause problems.”

Male teacher, 26 years old

“I hadn’t realized that sexuality is such a broad subject and that it is very important that we teach them not only to prevent unplanned pregnancies or infections, but also to have healthy relationships with everyone and protect their rights.”

Female teacher, 40 years old

Besides being trained in the main topics, teachers were also trained and given materials to replicate with their students during class.  We will accompany them through this next process and will post news about this in our next report.

Happy Holidays!