Friends Helping Amiguitos In Mexico

What is FHAIM?
It is a project of Amiguitos to provide a safe house to our at risk teens.

Amiguitos has recognized a new problem emerging in our community.  Some of our teens in Veracruz, Mexico have been displaced from their homes.   These students  are in need of a safe place to live which would also allow them to continue their education. FHAIM was organized to repond to this problem.  The goal is to inspire teens in the USA to help these teens in Mexico. 




Amiguitos works to transform the lives of children in Veracruz, Mexico through education.  We stress the importance of an education and provide students the opportunity to continue into higher education
(High School and College) which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.



As in many poorer areas, there is a great deal of domestic abuse of kids.  However as kids get older, they resist their situation.  Unfortunately this clash with parents and parts of the Mexican culture results in some teens being put out of their homes and into the streets.   The success of Amiguitos has created a challenge.  We have supported kids successfully in their education and we now have older teens in our program in High School and looking towards college.   The conflict between some teenagers and their families has resulted in two of our students being displaced from their homes.  As we continue to have students achieve High School and College educations, we see the potential for additional students being forced into this situation in the future.  We are not encouraging our students to leave their homes but rather want to provide a safe place for them to go if they are forced out of their homes.

Amiguitos has recognized this problem and has started a group we are calling FHAIM (Friends Helping Amiguitos In Mexico)  FHAIM is dedicated to providing a safe home to teens in need, to support continued education and give a positive sense of family.



Safe Home
First, we want to give students who need it a safe place to live.  We are looking for a house in a safe neighborhood near the home of our Director Goldi Santana Mera.  There are two boys currently living in the back corner of our Amiguitos school. They are sharing this cramped space between the two of them and we don’t think that this is a good long term solution.  It is not ideal to have them and their things in a public space like this, and in the future if we have any more students in this situation we won’t have sufficient space for them.

If we do not provide a home for these kids they will undoubtedly end up on the street and that would  put their lives at extreme risk. Living on the street they would be forced out of school and out of our program as they would have to focus on survival.  Things like prostitution and drug dealing are common occurances for homeless teens who are forced to make hard choices on how to earn money to survive.  This is something that we simply will not let happen.

Education and Work
Amiguitos and FHAIM share a mutual goal of stressing the importance of education.  FHAIM allows students to continue their education with the support of Amiguitos even if they have been displaced from their homes.  Staying off the streets allows students to stay in the Amiguitos program and continue to receive scholarships and support with their schools.

Amiguitos also provides a place for these teens to work.  Our teens currently run a bakery and a burger restaurant, and additional teen businesses are planned.  The restaurant has been named “Good Friends Burgers” and this was created so that we could provide a place for the teens to work without being forced to drop out of school like they would have to if they were employed somewhere else at much lower pay.  We also help them manage their income and teach them the responsibilities of becoming an adult.
   
Family
The last and most important factor of FHAIM is the sense of family.  Being displaced from your home also displaces you from your family.  Family is one of the most important factors of any culture.  For these kids, Amiguitos has become their family.  The teens spend most of their time together and have to go through all of life’s ups and downs together.  The students at Amiguitos are very close and very strong and this sense of family is the core that keeps the organization together.


The goal of FHAIM is to inspire teens in the United States to help these teens in Mexico.  We want to create events with teens and for teens here in Colorado with the goal of raising money that will go toward providing a safe house in Veracruz, Mexico.  The goal is to raise $12,000 a year to support this safe house program.  FHAIM will be working with High Schools and youth groups in the Denver metro area.  And we are available to work with others teens outside of Colorado who want to help.  We want the teens of our country to help give our teens in Mexico the opportunity to continue their education, which is an opportunity that we often take for granted as Americans.

Future events will be posted here, on facebook.com/fhaim as well as on twitter @fhaimexico.

Thank you for your suppport of this important project!