Community Centers in Tijuana Help Strengthen Families
Unity 4 Orphans’ Mexico Team continues to grow in scope and vision, expanding to support families through community centers that provide hope and healing to keep them together.
Our team, in the United States and internationally, believes that a family is the best line of defense for a child, and how God designed children to grow and thrive. However, many of the children we serve are in families experiencing multidimensional poverty. That can lead to abandonment for children whose parents are still living, but unable to meet their material and physical needs.
Since Unity 4 Orphans’ mission is to see the lives of vulnerable children transformed, sometimes we work with children living in orphanages, and sometimes we’re able to partner with children living with their parents. We’re excited to share a development in Tijuana built on the foundations of a solid in-country team and a shared goal to keep families together, preventing orphanhood for at-risk children.
Community Centers Help Vulnerable Children by Aiding Families
Program Director Marco and our growing team in Mexico are expanding their vision for what’s possible in poor communities where children often end up in orphanages. Many families struggle to provide, with absent fathers, mothers working multiple jobs, and a greater need for children to earn income than attend school.
I visited Columbia and Brazil at the end of the year and was praying for the next season of our ministry. They have community centers, or community homes, around the country that allow families to belong somewhere. I returned to Mexico thinking about our dedicated team and our access to many places in and around Tijuana where we can help children by strengthening their families.
–Marco, Mexico Programs Director
We began by helping one community center, which had been established but needed additional resources. By offering ESL and tutoring during the week as well as a pastor to provide mentorship our Mexico team is holistically serving the local community.
Support for Families Facing Poverty Prevents Orphanhood
With three community centers operating in different locations, more and more children continue to find stability through programs like Education 4 Change, Healing 4 Change, and Nutrition 4 Change. The positive impacts are rippling through not only the children, but their parents, and our in-country employees and volunteers.
The direction we’re heading in Mexico is more like the impact we’re making in other countries through orphan prevention. We’re excited about the growth of our programs to support community centers that go deeper and wider to help even more kids.
–Joe Brandi, Founder & Mission Director
With many families experiencing food insecurity, home environments full of conflict, and rampant abandonment and abuse, the greatest need is for a solid support system. By positioning our in-country team upstream of the orphanages, we’re able to help strengthen families and provide holistic support.
Weekly Family Services Enable Vulnerable Children to Thrive
Community centers are also giving local people of peace the opportunity to bless their neighbors. In one neighborhood a woman opens her home during the week for local children to come and eat, study, and spend time with a caring adult. She brings them to the Saturday program where they receive nutrition, counseling, ESL instruction, and tutoring for school work.
Seeing what Marco and his team are doing in Tijuana is something we can take to other places as well. The goal is to help support the entire familial unit to prevent these kids from ending up in orphanages. In serving community centers with multiple families, we’re able to reach some of the root causes of orphanhood and truly break cycles of generational poverty.
–Caitlin Snyder, Engagement Director
One single mother and her eldest son arrived at a center who hadn’t eaten for three days. Although Felipe is only 12 years old, he left school years ago to earn money and help support his five younger siblings. On a recent Saturday, he shared that by spending time with men who volunteer at the center he’s seeing different ways to live and realizing the kind of father he wants to be someday.
Positioning Support Upstream of the Orphanages Brings Hope
Children like Felipe and his family receive intervention amidst seemingly hopeless circumstances, gaining a foundation to build brighter futures. This upstream approach is already changing lives, and the number of children and families grows each week as word spreads.
For many of these kids, it’s the right moment to change their future, and we would love to help them. Many of the children at the orphanages come from these communities, so we want to prevent more kids from ending up there. We pray for more strong families in the future as a result of the community centers.
–Marco, Mexico Programs Director.
We’re humbled and excited to empower vulnerable children to rise above poverty and build healthier families someday. Through education, nutrition, safe spaces to play, and learning about Jesus’ love for them, children are able to hope for futures they’ve never thought possible.