We are off to the Sierra Mixteca again! On Saturday Aug. 17, 2019 we will leave Oaxaca City for Huajuapan de Leon, purchase the supplies and head out on Sunday to the villages. Our team of six will be expertly supplemented by the high school students, authorities and teachers in the villages, for sorting, packing and distributing. It gets more streamlined every year!

Thanks to everyone who has donated to this year’s fund! Without your help, over 1500 children and youth would be without new school supplies and workbooks, 150 high school students would find it much more difficult to stay in school, and 16 university students would not be the pioneers they are, and an example of courage and perseverance to their peers.

Special thanks to Maria Elena Aguilar and Editores Montenegro for the generous donation of beautiful workbooks for every child in elementary school, over 700 children. The excitement of the kids when they get their books is indescribable!

We are so proud of our new graduates and will welcome more new students into our little scholarship program this year!

Every month we send a food stipend to grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, usually because their parents died in accidents in Mexico or crossing the border, or because of untreated illness. In 2019 there are 33 orphans and disabled children who benefit from a little more security because of your donations.

In 2018 we began to take reading glasses to one village where the women are master embroiderers, but have to stop early due to presbyopia. Now they can keep up their creativity and find joy in their art again. We got such a great response we are taking more pairs this year, some for all the five villages.

Thanks to all, and please keep us in your prayers as we set out once again.

Photo credits: Martha Martin, 2018

If you wish to contribute to the many ongoing needs of the children and families, please go to our Donate page. All donations are tax-deductible.

Blessings on all!

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WE ARE PRIVILEGED TO SERVE CHRIST IN THE CHILDREN AND TO BRING HOPE TO THEIR FAMILIES

The Oaxaca Education Fund invites you to participate or to donate to the Annual 5K Walk on March 30th, 2019 in Penasquitos Canyon!

DONATIONS MAY BE ONE TIME OR MONTHLY, WITH YOUR CREDIT CARD VIA PAYPAL OR BY CHECK. ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE. PLEASE GO TO THE DONATE PAGE.

This is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year and an excellent opportunity to catch up with many of our dear friends who served the migrant workers in Rancho Penasquitos for so many years! Thank you for your solidarity with the poor and for your passion to keep the children of the Sierra Mixteca in school!

Photos courtesy of Martha Martin and Michael Akong

OUR PROJECTED BUDGET FOR 2019: $32,000.

• 1500 packets of school supplies for all the children K – 12 in 5 villages
• Biannual assistance to 125 high school students
• Biannual partial scholarships to 15 university students
• Monthly food stipends to 33 orphaned and disabled children
• Administrative costs are zero. Volunteers staff all aspects of our program

FIVE VILLAGES

• San Jorge Nuchita
• San Juan Piñas
• San Marcos Zochiquilazala
• San Jorge Rio Frijol
• Santos Reyes Zochiquilazala

WHY OAXACA?

The Sierra Mixteca is in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, at 8000-9000 feet, incredibly beautiful, but isolated, and forgotten by the government. The Mixteco people are an indigenous group with their own language, known as the People of the Clouds. For decades they have come to work in agriculture in the U.S., especially California, to make a better living for their families, in the absence of paid work in their villages where there is only subsistence farming.

BEGINNING THE OAXACA EDUCATION FUND

The Oaxaca Education Fund is the natural outgrowth of Migrant Outreach at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, which started in 1985 to attend to the spiritual, educational, and material needs of the Mexican migrant workers living and working in the fields in McGonigle Canyon, Rancho Penasquitos, San Diego, California. Over the years, until the end of agriculture in Carmel Valley in 2009, we had up to 120 dedicated volunteers from the parish on the weekend at Mass in the canyon, taking turns serving a hot meal. We made fast friends with many of the men who attended. When most of them returned to Mexico or left to work in other areas, we were concerned about the struggles the families in the villages were having to find the funds to keep their children in school. Their education and future were in danger!

In 2011, the migrant men from the Sierra Mixteca who were still in Rancho Penasquitos recommended that we ask the village authorities if yearly school supplies would help the families keep their children in school. In 2012 the Oaxaca Education Fund (OEF) began, with supplies for one village with 750 children.

For the past seven years (2012-2019) OEF has made an annual mission trip. The school supplies distribution has grown to 5 villages.

A total of 1500 children and young people are provided with supplies. A generous benefactor in Guadalajara (Editores Montenegro) provides workbooks for the hundreds of children in primary school!

The volunteers go to Oaxaca for 9 days in August. We buy supplies, pack them with the students, & distribute them over 5 days. We visit the orphans and other families, and meet with the students, parents and teachers. We attend Mass or prayer services. Two volunteer acupuncturists treat over 140 patients in the villages over those 5 days.

GROWTH OF THE PROGRAM

2014: We began to help with high school student’s biannual fees in 2 villages, to encourage them to stay in school. The total number is 125 this year.

2014: We began to assist recently orphaned children with a small monthly food stipend: a 4 year-old girl whose parents had both died in a car accident, and another family of 5 children whose mother had died of cancer, and whose father is incarcerated. Now there are 33 children enrolled. Their stories of grief, loss and deprivation are heartbreaking; their resilience is inspiring. We are honored to help out a little with the hardships they and their grandparents face, to give them a future filled with hope and love.

2017: We began to give partial university scholarships twice a year, to 15 young people. Two have graduated, a nurse and a teacher, and 15 are still in process. The cost averages about $500 each per year.

2018: We took reading glasses for the women embroiderers in one village, so they could continue their art and pass it down to their children. Many had stopped their embroidery art when presbyopia set in. Their excitement was wonderful to behold!

YOU DID IT TO ME. MT. 25

Our 5K Walk to Support the Kids in Oaxaca will be Saturday, March 30, 2019. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. We’ll meet at Canyonside Park in Rancho Peñasquitos (12350 Black Mt. Rd. San Diego, 92129) behind Ballfield #4. Please see the Flyer for additional details. Hope you will join us!

OEF 5K Walk 2019 – Flyer

OEF 5K Walk 2019 – Sponsor Sheet

Dear friends of the Oaxaca Education Fund!

Thank you for your generous donations at our superfun Walk in May, as well as the collections at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Nativity Parishes in San Diego, and the University of San Diego, and for buying the crafts and other items we sell to raise funds for the children and young people of the 5 villages in Oaxaca! We have enough now to buy the supplies and will be raising more throughout the year for the high school fees for 140 and the partial scholarships for 15 university students.

We have some very sad news too. Our dear friend Terri Trujillo, who was leader of Migrant Outreach at Our Lady of Mount Carmel for many years, passed away suddenly on June 21. We and the people in the villages who knew and loved her will miss her loving and concerned presence and quiet generosity. Safe journey to the everlasting home, Terri! You are much loved by those you leave behind.

Annual Distribution Trip to Oaxaca coming up August 18-26!

On August 18, 2018 our team of seven will arrive in Oaxaca City. We will head out in our rental van to buy the truckload of supplies for 1600 children and youth in Huajuapan de Leon, and pick up the hundreds of primary level workbooks donated by Montenegro Editores in Guadalajara once again this year! Then we will leave for the villages on Sunday Aug. 19, to pack and distribute all those school supplies with the high school students and the village authorities. It’s a heavy task, but very rewarding. Mike Akong will treat many many patients at his free acupuncture clinics, and we will visit the 27 orphans and disabled children we help every month. We will meet with the youth, and have some prayer services and perhaps Mass in the village churches. They will make us their best food, which in Oaxaca is really saying something, and we will enjoy their friendship. We will catch up with the students and hear about their exciting and challenging experiences at university in Oaxaca and Puebla.

All of this thanks to you, our donors. We and they are so grateful that you care about them and their futures.