Alternative Spring Break, Casa Amiga, Juarez, Mexico
Location:
Juarez, Mexico
Description:
Each year the Tucker Foundation provides the opportunity for students to spend their Spring Break as part of a service-learning trip, known as Alternative Spring Break trips. Trips are student organized and run, and most of the funding for each trip comes from a campus-wide fundraising effort that occurs during the winter term.
Background:
In the past 12 years, hundreds of women have gone missing and/or been found raped and murdered in the deserts surrounding the border town of Juarez City, Mexico. Despite a general outcry from the region, the Mexican government has done little to recognize the systematic nature of these murders, and much less to prevent them from reoccurring.
Goals:
- Bear witness to this tradegy and serve community there.
- Work with a few different community organizations including a women's center, Casa Amiga, in Juarez.
- Shop, cook, help with childcare for women staying at the center
- Translate Spanish texts to help in calling international attention to the situation.
- Sort and label donated clothing and foodstuffs.
- Design and mount posters for the center.
- Provide administrative support for the group Las Amigas de Juarez at a location in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Juarez.
- The whole group will also be put to work for at least 3 days in the colonias of Juarez, helping to build a school or clear a plot of desert, etc.
- Tour the maquiladora sites (transnational factories), where the majority of the women inhabiting this border region work.
Time Commitment:
The trip will require a substantial amount of your time during winter term. There is an intensive mandatory educational component consisting of numerous readings, seminars, and videos -- basically, it is a fourth course. Due to the safety issues surrounding the trip, participants will also be required to take a self-defense course. Finally, as it is an international trip it will require a good deal of money to run, and all participants must fully commit to fundraising with the group. If you are unable to make this level of commitment, do not apply.
Related Programs:
- ASB, Hunger and Homelessness, Washington, D.C.
- ASB, Hunger and Homelessness, Jacksonville, Florida
- ASB, Habitat for Humanity, Sarasota, Florida
- and others
Related Courses:
- Gender and Politics in Latin America (Govt 49.4)
- Immigrant Women’s Writing in America (Engl 62)
- Gender and Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Anth 12)
Contacts:
- Blitz "Vanessa Vega" or
- Blitz "Eva Vivalt" or
- Blitz "Monica Barrera" for more information
Sources:
- The Tucker Foundation site for Alternative Spring Breaks
Entry information
- Categories: Education
- Keywords: Juarez, Mexico, El Paso, Texas, Women's Rights