Showing posts with label foundations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foundations. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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
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
Saturday, November 6, 2010
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.
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