Help children of Ixaya & Tashirat to better future

Help me offer education and a better future to the children of Ixaya and Tashirat!

Hola queridos todos!

How is everybody doing on their new years resolutions and aspirations? Are you able to stay away from the cigarettes, those extra cookies and beers or wines? If so, good work and keep reading! If not, I have a potential extra motivation factor for you to spend the money on something else that’s more helpful to a healthy future – for many sweet little kids in Mexico that is :D

When I fundraised for the Caras Alegres project in Guatemala last year, I saw with my own eyes what our European Euros can do for the children and their families here. It was incredible, very rewarding and fulfilling! (See my blogs with “Caras Alegres” in the title; also, their new Newsletter just came out and I’m in it too! I can send it to you, so if you’d like that let me know!).

Beginning of December 2011 I landed as a volunteer at my fifth project and still find it a very inspiring and beautiful home here at Tashirat, in Tepoztlan, central Mexico.

Getting more and more involved in the project, I’m feeling more and more like making an even bigger contribution than I am already doing now… Therefore I decided I’d like to ask your help once more, to fundraise together for the children of Ixaya and Tashirat!

A quick overview of Tashirat as an organization

Tashirat is a comprehensive non-profit organization dedicated to the service of humanity, see also www.tashirat.com. It was founded by Artimia Arian in 1994 primarily as a Cosmic Learning Center and Ashram. They have always aided the neediest sectors of society (the underprivileged, disabled, and sick) through various service projects, wherein they have given counseling, taught natural medicine, hygiene, literacy and basic and remedial education. In 2003 they decided that the greatest service they could provide to humanity, would be to open an orphanage, providing abandoned/neglected children with a healthy home life and future (http://www.tashirat.com/orphanage-school/tashirat-orphanage).

In 2008 they expanded their service work by opening the Ixaya School (http://www.tashirat.com/orphanage-school/ixaya-school) for the impoverished children of the surrounding underprivileged communities. Ixaya means “to open one’s eyes” in the native indigenous language of Nahuatl.

Right now there are about 30 children living at the Tashirat orphanage (from age 2.5 to 19 years old), with about 8 staff members. Although all the kids live with their own ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ (there are two men; they and the ‘moms’ have up to 6 or 7 children each!), the Tashirat community is like one big family. Six of the kids go to Ixaya, the rest receives classes at Tashirat. This is mainly because most of them are “special needs” children. They don’t always know much about the backgrounds of all the children, but what is known is oftentimes very moving and sometimes simply horrible. It’s incredible to hear the stories and see how the kids are regaining confidence in themselves, other people and life, and how they’ve developed since they came to this new loving home.

Tashirat is completely based on funds (mainly coming from the USA), they don’t receive any money from the government. That’s an important reason why ecologically conscious self-sustainability is their main goal right now. They have a huge cultivation project going on, expanding rapidly with for example the avocado and lime yard they realized last year and the two big green houses they’re building right now. They’re building as much as they can, so they will also have food to sell after they’ve provided for themselves. They also have 2 big chicken runs and focus on things like catching the rainwater, saving it in big cisterns before dividing it over the houses and creating compost (lots of it! – we all have “dry” toilets here). Together with other volunteers that were here I’ve been (and I still am) helping out with the construction of the new green houses. We’re starting seeding for the first time right now!

More information can be found on the website, which also provides some newsletters (http://www.tashirat.com/blog), the most recent one you can find here: http://www.tashirat.com/tashirat-newsletter-december-2011january-2012

Ixaya School

I’m mainly working in the Ixaya School (see also my previous blogs where I write about this!). Here I teach English to all the primary school grades (1&2 combined, 3&4 together and 5&6), 45 minutes to 1 hour a day per class, for three days. The other two days of the week I’m the Physical Education teacher for the same groups and on Saturdays I prepare it all. The Ixaya teachers have fully embraced me into their team, which is a great privilege and a lot of fun!

Since last September, Macu started at Ixaya as the new director. She is a true power woman, dedicating her life to humanity, with an impressive (amount of) positive energy and many years of experience in teaching and directing schools!

The mission of Ixaya is to give underprivileged and “at risk” children a globally-conscious education and a safe haven where they are provided with the skills and building blocks to construct successful, healthy and happy lives. With Macu’s coming, the whole Ixaya community is striving for this more than ever. Macu is restructuring and with that improving the method of working a lot! All the classes now work almost completely project (theme) based and there is daily structural time for personal attention and guidance for all the children. Next to the normal academic activities, the kids are being stimulated and challenged with a variety of workshops every week. Since they’re all given by volunteers it fluctuates a bit, but now there’s e.g. ecological consciousness (working with the earth), music, circular dance and art. For the English classes I am providing all the materials and making the copies etc that are needed. For Physical Education (and during the break-time of the kids) there are not many toys or other materials. Therefore, I bought 5 new balls (footballs, a volleyball and handball) and skipping-ropes last week… you should’ve seen the look on their faces when they saw the presents!! :D

Ixaya is also (literally) providing space in the afternoons for adults education. Here in Mexico there are many people who haven’t finished their primary or secondary school.

Macu’s ultimate goal for Ixaya is to provide the high quality, conscious and varied education at extremely low costs or when possible for free. This way, also the really underprivileged children can enter, since these are ones that (usually) need education the most! However, there is still a long way to go to reach this goal and therefore I would like to ask you all to join our powers (= resources) and help them on their way!

Donations

‘One time’ donations are of really great help! However, even more important for the project is stability, which can be created by more structural donations.

Ixaya has only 35 students in primary school and 5 in the secondary class at this moment. They started off with about a 80 children, also providing a nutritious meal for them every day (malnutrition is seen in part of the children). Unfortunately, because there was financial uncertainty about whether the school/all the classes could stay open, the meals stopped and many families saw themselves forced to look for another school.

Since Ixaya is part of the Tashirat organization, they receive part of their funding from them. However, Tashirat is in need of more funding as well and the parents of Ixaya kids are being asked for a monetary cooperation. Even though the amount is already low, there are some families that cannot meet the subscription sum. Macu makes agreements with these parents, so the children can stay in school: e.g. the parents (many of them single moms) come to clean the school.

Another example that makes it very evident how desperately Ixaya needs more funding, is Alejandra (teacher grades 1&2) and my good friend Antares (teacher grades 3&4). They receive half of the payment they should get monthly, which is not a lot already (imagine getting only half of it!). Both are doing an incredible job though, they are in it with all their heart and enthusiasm and I’m learning a lot from them! Antares is even teaching (voluntarily!) in the afternoons with 3 of the Tashirat kids that attend school at Ixaya in the mornings, AND taking initiatives to take these kids on little outings every now and then. The Tashirat kids hardly ever leave the terrain and when I went with them and Antares to visit the Carnaval last week, it was a lot of fun and very heartwarming to see them enjoy themselves so much :)

As you see, it’s important for Ixaya and Tashirat to have stability. This way they can maintain their teachers, keep growing as a community and keep providing all the children with the love and education they deserve.

If you are able to make a donation, any kind of donation, that would be REALLY GREAT!

Absolutely tremendously incredibly awesomely stupendously FANTASTIC would be if you could even consider the following:

Through the website of Tashirat it’s possible to make a MONTLY donation: https://www.tashirat.com/donate

As I am mainly being a voice for the needs of Ixaya right now, I’d like to ask you to scroll down the donation webpage to where it says “IXAYA SCHOOL”. Here you find the possibility to make a “one time” or “monthly recurring” donation. You can even choose to sponsor a student completely with the “monthly student sponsorship” option.

The Tashirat Orphanage is doing an incredible job as well. So when you have more affinity with this part of the organization; they will be MORE than happy with your donation too! At https://www.tashirat.com/donate, you’ll find the possibility to make an “one time” or “monthly recurring” donation to the Tashirat Orphanage. Here too you can choose to sponsor a child (which they need as well, for not all the children have sponsors yet) with a “monthly recurring child sponsorships”. When you select this, you’ll be given the opportunity to receive more information about and get in contact with the actual child that you’re sponsoring (when possible, depending on the child of course).

When you want to stop you’re monthly donation, you simply send Tashirat an email!

Of course, I will be a intermediary as well. So when you prefer to make a donation to a (= my ;) ) Dutch bank account, that would be just as wonderful!! I’ll make sure the money goes straight to Ixaya and Tashirat and will keep you up to date.

If you prefer the latter, you can send your donation to:
account nr. 8405218 (ING bank)
in name of R. M. Sportel
(if needed: ) at Uitgeest

For donations to my Dutch account from countries other than The Netherlands, you need the following information:
IBAN (International Bank Account Number): NL78 INGB 0008405218
BIC (Bank Identifier Code): INGBNL2A

In name of all the people from Ixaya and Tashirat, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

And in name of myself, I send you 398 enormous hugs, 1071 kilo of (warm!) Mexican sunshine and 354.284 thank you’s and smiles :D

PS. Check out the picture of all the beautiful kids in the "foto" album with the same title as this post!

Also, I'll upload two little video's as soon as I can. Enjoy!!

PS2. If you have any questions, requests or other things you'd like to share with me, don't hesistate to send me an email!   [email protected]