Tashirat foundation in Mexico

Tashirat foundation in Mexico

Tashirat Kids Newsletter – March/April 2011
Dear Family and Friends,

It’s the height of the dry season, and things are getting pretty dusty around here. There seems to be no way of keeping the kids clean, short of keeping them indoors, which frankly, would be too cruel when there is so much nice, chocolate colored dirt around to play with! They also love grinding different rocks and bricks into “chile” powder, and playing “restaurant” with it, but after an hour of two, they are hardly recognizable!



Our teen boys have been diligently building a cement paved bike track, advancing a few meters a day. It's hard work though, so thankfully our recently returned volunteer, Kao, has recruited all the younger boys to join in too, and they are advancing at triple speed. Since everyone is into riding bikes, we can’t wait until it’s finished. Many of the girls also recently received a donation of bikes from friends and family. Thank you Pimi Gill, Tina, Kao and family for their great bikes!





A couple of months ago the children were fast asleep, when smoke from a nearby forest fire forced us into an emergency evacuation of the entire orphanage! As ambulances and police trucks poured into Tashirat, the children huddled together in their pajamas, wide eyed, watching the mountain close behind our bungalows smolder.



We piled them and their bedding into the awaiting rescue vehicles, and were taken to our friends Anneke and Adrian’s house. When we arrived at our friends’ house, there were loads of beds already laid out, but the kids were having so much fun by then that it felt much more like a pajama party than an emergency evacuation!



The next morning, the smoke was better but the kids were having too much fun playing in our friends’ garden and enjoying their gracious hospitality to want to go home.

Other exciting news: we received a new little girl in February, and a new little boy just last week! The girl’s name is Joline and she is 4 ½ years old. She was abandoned when she was two years old, and has spent the last two years living in the big government foster home in Cuernavaca. Jolie was very timorous and insecure, and spent the first few days here sleeping and talking to no one. She is getting happier by the week though and is starting to run, play and gain confidence in herself.





When Jolie first arrived, she behaved much like a two year old. Fortunately, she has started to mature again and seems to be developing the equivalent of a few months every week or so. Surely by the next newsletter she’ll be a very different little person!

Juan Diego is also four years old, and basically grew up in the government foster home since he was abandoned at 6 months of age. He is a very easy kid, who is naturally extroverted and curious about everything that is going on around him.





Juan Diego is always pointing everything out and saying or asking it's name. We think he is going to prove to be one of the easier cases we have taken. He is lacking gross motor skills for a child his age, but we think he may normalize with age and lots of physical activity.

We are also hoping to take more Special Ed in the near future. Recently, we went to the visit the child welfare agency and were begged to take 6 more very special cases, between 5 months and 4 years old. One of the main reasons is that they have seen how the Special Ed. children we have taken in the past, have ended up normalizing a lot in our care. Plus, it is hard to find orphanages who will keep disabled children after they reach age 18, so these cases will probably end up in a government home all their lives, as they will never become 100% independent.



Also, many of the children we took were on up to 4 medications and suffered from many physical problems when they arrived and none is on medication nor do they suffer from those same problems now. The changes in our other children have also been positive; even the youngest of our children give these special children so much affection and love. It has really opened our kids’ hearts to love and care for others who need their love, as well as to receive love from all of us.

The biggest thank you to everyone who has stuck with us in an effort to help our children live a new life!

Happy Spring and best wishes to all,

Tashirat kids and staff

Tashirat foundation in Mexico

Dearest Friends and Family,

Christmas has passed but we are still left with a lot of beautiful memories of the Christmas pageant which is now officially Tashirat’s end of the year highlight. This year was our 3rd annual “Pastorela”, which is performed by many of our Tashirat children and students from the Ixaya School. We uploaded many video clips from the Pastorela. They are all located at our You Tube Channel: www.youtube.com/tashiratkids

One of our favorites is our angel Melina on the "telas" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lawt1JgZfss but you can find all of the videos at http://www.youtube.com/tashiratkids if you'd like to see the whole show .

It’s not as good as the real thing, but it will give you a glimpse! The best part of the show was really seeing the kids feel so good about themselves for what they accomplished, and their parents with tears in their eyes as they watched them perform.

This year Rubi and Sami portrayed Mary and Joseph, and Melina, Tanya, and Misha performed acrobatic dance on the telas. This was Misha’s first “telas” performance, and a big event because just two weeks before the performance she wanted to drop out! She couldn’t perform the routine as fast as her partner, but within a week of the show, she picked up speed and come show night, she did a beautiful job. Melina and Tanya are already becoming seasoned performers; since Shana has been too busy with high school, the younger generations are getting intothe spotlight more than ever!

Many of our younger children danced and sang along with their classes; for Atair, it was his first ever performance ever. When he got his costume, he was so excited, he just couldn’t stop giggling and grinning – and he didn’t want to ever take it off!

Following the pageant we all sang “the piñata song” as we broke a bunch of piñatas with Ixaya students and their families. Having been used to our more tame piñata parties, with only our little children, we watched in horror as a mob of 30 kids dive-tackled the fallen piñatas. Although it looked a lot like a football pile up, everyone came out with huge, piñata-crazed grins and hands full of fruit, peanuts and, the ultimate prize: pieces of the piñata to store their loot in!

Christmas was spent with our official Tashirat grandpa and grandma, Tom and Kristen Bissinger. They have been coming for years and really cultivating a relationship with each one of our children, even as their clan of grandchildren ballooned from 9 to 19 to 30 children! Christmas was especially festive with “granma and granpa” here to share it! A big thank you as well to all of your who sent such beautiful gifts down for the kids this Christmas!



On three Kings Day, the traditional day for giving gifts here in Mexico, we invited the government home for abandoned senior citizens to Tashirat. It is like the home our children once lived in, but for seniors, many of whom remain in the home until they pass on. It was really beautiful to see the kids interact and give of themselves, spending time playing board games, sharing cookies they had baked, probing them with questions and just listening to their stories.

Now, the Ixaya school is back in session and everyone is really excited to be back!

As for our high school teens Shana, Antar and Julio, we have found an amazing on-line, virtual high school which is based in Miami, Florida. While it is specifically made for Spanish speakers, it will provide them with a diploma that's valid both in Mexico and the United States and give them a lot more time to pursue their various interests. Other advantages are that they can complete their high school studies in just one and half years, instead three, which is important because Shana and Antar are already 2-3 years behind in their schooling , because of all the years they weren't sent to school before the age of 11. They also will have more time for the extracurricular activities such as dance and music and Antar's electronics course, all of which they had to give up when starting the local highschool this fall. The schooling there was very intense for them, with many, many hours of homework and long hours at school. After two semesters in the local highschool, we saw they really needed a more practical education – in large part because of all the years they didn't go to school. The are really excited to have enrolled in this on-line school,as it really meets their needs and academic level better, and has allowed them to pursue all of their interests at the same time. Of course, all of this would never have been possible for them if not for Georgie's Computer Lab, where they are currently taking all of their classes! Thank you again Georgie and Jak; you have opened a whole new world of possibilities for our children with this amazing gift!

Wishing you all a wonderful 2011!

With much love,

Tashirat kids and staff

Tashirat foundation in Mexico

Dear Family and Friends,

This past month we celebrated the inauguration of our first ever computer lab, replete with 10 new computers, and a great central building here in Tashirat! This most amazing gift came to us in a very heart-warming way, through a donation from our friends Georgie and Jak, who are sponsors to three of our Tashirat children. As a surprise to Georgie for their 10th wedding anniversary, Jak decided to give something big to all of the children in Georgie’s name! Thank you Georgie and Jak for spreading your love to all of our children and students on your special day!



We have also just officially opened a health food cafe/juice bar and nutrition center! The café is also a kind of community space for our Learning Center. The Center continues to give daily yoga and meditation classes to the community, as well as courses. In the last weeks prior to the grand opening, the older children helped build herb and vegetable gardens around the café.



Most of our boys spend their afternoons riding bikes – it’s officially the big boy craze around Tashirat. Everywhere you look there are little boys on their bikes (or tricycles), often traveling in packs. They not only spend a lot of time riding them, but also decorating them. Each bike is outfitted with old CD’s stuck in the spokes and plastic bottles over the tires, in order to create the biggest “VROOM” sound possible!






Three of our teenagers, Cristian, Blanca and David, are now in high school and really enjoying their new social life and classes! Their only complaints are the many hours every night they spend doing homework and getting up at 5:30 in the morning for school! Otherwise, they couldn’t be happier with their exciting new school life. For many children in our area, making it to high school is considered quite an achievement. For our 18 year old Cristian, who’s been here 7 ½ years and was clinically labeled autistic before coming to Tashirat at age 11, it is a real triumph that he now attends this regular high school and has his first girlfriend, a really beautiful girl. Over these years he’s become a wonderful, normal, real “cool” kid.

Tashirat foundation

A huge thank you to everyone who has been helping us to raise funds for the school. We are still in need of one teacher’s salary – $700 USD a month – so please let us know if you can help in any way. Every sponsorship means so much. www.tashirat.com/donate .

In order to keep Ixaya open, we have two of our staff members volunteering full-time in the primary school grades, and another two volunteering part time to avoid the cost of three additional teacher’s salaries. We still need to pay four hired teachers though and as mentioned above, we are still missing the salary of one, so we continue to work on this and appreciate all your support!

The summer vacation here in Mexico has quickly come to an end, but it seems it was only days ago that we celebrated the last day of school and graduation!

In Mexico graduation from 6th grade (primary school) and then again from 9th grade (middle school) are celebrated as very big events in a child’s life. Here are some of our graduates this year.







The celebration was made special by the children’s artistic performances. One especially interesting performance was directed by a professional parade organizer, Roxana, who was a volunteer at Ixaya this past year. As one of the elective classes offered to the secondary students, Roxana gave instruction in performance arts.




Another highlight was a musical performance performed by the first and second graders as the culmination to this year’s music classes.

It was directed by our music teacher Jimmy, who has been a parent in the school and a volunteer teacher for the past two years.


The students also presented an array of their artwork.





A very special thank you to several friends who have gone the extra mile in their efforts to support our projects. Michelle Silva pulled off an amazing fundraiser, her first time ever, in Vancouver this spring, and all before ever coming for her first visit! One of our past volunteers Genevieve (aka Kao) Lawrie and Tina Jojic have been making and selling their own granola and tons of Ixaya stickers Kao designed, while another past volunteer, Craig Smith, inspired the local soccer academy in his hometown in Scotland to donate the proceeds from a soccer match. This week we just received the news that yet another past volunteer, Iris Maertens, raised funds by organizing an event for the World Cup and will be holding a music event in her native Belgium soon.

Our friend Alicia Gentz Montoya has been holding yoga class fundraisers over the past year in and around Los Angeles, California to help support Tashirat. Her next yoga event, Sweat for Tashirat, will be held September 25th at the Yogaworks studio in West Lake Village. The event will include free aromatherapy consultations courtesy of Robin Barnette of Aromachick, followed by a fun Vinyasa flow yoga class with Chaz Russ, who was recently named Best New Yoga Instructor in LA Family Magazine, and is the founder of Sisters Yoga, an all female yoga studio in Fresno, California. After the class, there will be complimentary Mexican style snacks, courtesy of Chipotle Restaurant.



Please attend if you are in the area or pass this invitation on to your friends that live in or around LA. You can call 805-371-3030 for more information or to rsvp. This entire event is free! All donations contributed will be sent directly to Tashirat to support our Ixaya School.



A very big thank you once again to each one of you for your continued care and support for the Ixaya school; we couldn’t do this without you!



Lots of love,

Tashirat and Ixaya school staff and students

www.ixayaschool.com

Tashirat Foundation

Our animal population has been growing – we now have a parrot, four bunnies, several dogs, and we just got two 4 month old St. Bernard puppies, which we are planning to breed (to help pay for the copious amount of food they eat!) This breed of dog is known to be kind, loving and loyal, which we thought would make them just perfect for the children…what we didn’t count on was that the littlest children would be absolutely petrified of them (and they aren’t nearly full grown yet)! Most of the little ones will now pet the dogs hesitatingly, but are still more than terrified if one of the dogs comes eagerly running to greet them! Only baby Arian, has been pretty much fearless from the start.



This spring we have been very excited about our eco- project. Our goal is to make the ashram and orphanage self sustainable and ecological. We are currently looking into installing “earthworm composts” by the main houses. This seems to be the most effective and fastest way of composting our organic waste, but we will need a lot of worms, as it takes one kilo of earthworms to make one kilo of compost per day! The earthworms are expensive, but an engineer friend has donated our first 10 kilos for free!

We are currently arranging an exchange program for groups of students to come and stay on the ashram, in exchange for landscaping gardens around the children’s homes, and building irrigation systems which recycle the water from the homes. This will supplement the food supply from the greenhouse, which is also being prepared to produce presently. We have a chicken coop just finished and are working on outfitting a solar room, where we can power our most important appliances. We also recently installed drain pipes to the large soccer court roof which funnels all the rain water into an enormous cistern. We can then use this water throughout the dry season. Since we only have rain during four months of the year, and no underground spring water, catchment systems are imperative.

Meanwhile the new children have been giving us so many funny anecdotes over the past year. Here are a few we thought you would enjoy hearing:


Dovin, age 5, and third youngest in a family of five, is one of the most impish little people you will ever meet. When he is excited and happy, he’ll often break into a jerky dance while pulling the most hilarious faces. He is full of enthusiasm, but loves to say “No!” to just about everything you say. One day, two of our teenage girls, Kendra and Rubi, began complaining that something or someone was leaving rocks in their beds night after night! It remained an unsolved mystery for a few days, until Dovin was caught in the act of sneaking into one of the girls’ rooms and filling her pillow case with rocks!

Recently all of our boys, ranging age 4 to 10, have discovered the joy of fort making! They will spend the entire afternoon building forts from just about anything they can find. Atair, age 10, and our most recent newcomer, is the master architect; he’ll spend hours making and remaking some of the most elaborate constructions on his own. Alex and Dovin, our 3 and 4 year old brothers, work more like a pair of mini engineer twins, chattering away as to the merits of each new piece of plastic or plywood they put into place.


Now Alex and Dovins’ older brother Abundio likes forts but he would much rather busy himself loading and unloading wheelbarrows of rocks, digging holes, and collecting brush. He so loves to help with “real work”, that he actually becomes immensely upset if his help is ever not needed.


We are very proud of our almost 4 year old boy Gaby, who suffers from Ehler Danlos syndrome (characterized by hyper elasticity of the joints) and dwarfism, as he is making the biggest effort to become mobile. He gets so excited when he sees a child running, that he shrieks, flails his arms and bounces up and down and motions them to run some more for him! Although his legs are still weak and floppy, his arms are strong enough to support his own weight now. His favorite thing is going down the slide; he likes to hang from the rails at the top of the slide, then let himself go whizzing down as he holds his breath! Gaby really loves the thrill, and the moment he comes to a stop, he calls out “mas, mas!” for more. One day while getting his diaper changed, Gaby came up with another new trick – he rolls over and then scoots himself backwards off the bed! We happened to catch one of his first tricks on video; check this link to see it!




Another great kid accomplishment, which we can’t take the credit for, is Oscar’s recent reading and writing progress. Oscar is just turned 11. His family of 3 arrived in the summer of 2009. None of the children had ever properly attended school, and Oscar was extremely self conscious about his inability to read or write. But thanks to a special volunteer, Antares Hernandez, he is improving by the week! Antares has been very dedicated to her daily three hours of tutoring him; so much so that she recently decided to commit to stay here for an entire year, instead of the two months she originally had planned, so that she could continue to give Oscar all the individual attention he needs, both academically and as his special “auntie”!

We have also had Betina Mansbach, a veteran elementary school teacher here for the past month as another great help tutoring the children in our special learning classrooms. With her passion for teaching she brought an enthusiasm and excitement to the classroom that kids and staff really enjoyed.

Our first and second graders had a blast in Betina's inspired classes!



As for our other volunteers, we’ve just had an acrobat from Germany, Kristin VeiB, who gave a 3 week beginning acrobatics course to the children, which culminated in an informal performance for all the families!




Melody White, another one of our artistic volunteers, created a puppet theatre with our 11 and 12 year old girls Misha and Danya, which they performed for the other kids! Alex and Dovin must have never seen a puppet show before, because they kept jumping up to scrutinize the puppets and then very gingerly try to touch them, to see if they were real!


Artistic opportunities for the children seem to just keep on coming, too; this summer we have both a professional pianist and modern dancer coming to do artistic programs with the children!

Thank you all so much for your care and support; we are deeply grateful for the kindness that you continue to share with us!

Wishing you all a wonderful summer!

With lots of love,

Tashirat kids and staff