Tijuana Businessman Helps At-Risk kids
From the San Diego Union Tribune
By Sandra Dibble
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/mar/04/tijuana-businessm...
"TIJUANA — Enrique Gamboa is a man who knows what he loves: sportfishing, playing golf, painting landscapes — and finding ways to keep Mexico’s
at-risk youth out of trouble.
“Kids are my passion, and especially kids that are vulnerable,” Gamboa said.
At 72, the Tijuana native is a white-haired grandfather of six and benefactor to hundreds of other young people in the city who may not even know his
name. Gamboa, a Tijuana businessman with a broad network of contacts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, has been leading a push to bring Boys
& Girls clubs to Mexico as a means of preventing youths from falling prey to crime and drugs.
The concept has gained rapid acceptance at a time when many areas of the country are fighting to shake off the grip of organized crime. Less than
three years after Gamboa launched Latin America’s first Boys & Girls Club in eastern Tijuana, such clubs now operate in the eastern state of
Hidalgo and the city of Nogales, across from Arizona. An additional 26 are in various stages of planning and construction across Mexico, including two
more in Tijuana and one each in Rosarito Beach, San Felipe, Tecate and Mexicali.
Though patterned after the U.S. group, El Club de Niños y Niñas de Mexico operates independently and has a separate logo, and its affiliates do their
own fundraising. Gamboa, a furniture manufacturer and property developer, is founder and president of the national organization.
“Enrique has proven to be absolutely the most dynamic mover and shaker I can think of,” said Wim Selders, a national trustee of the Boys & Girls
Club of America who initially proposed the Tijuana project more than a decade ago.
Dating back more than a century, Boys & Girls Clubs of America aim to provide safe and affordable places for children to gather after school.
Today they operate under a Congressional charter, receive federal government support and count a roster of former members that includes top athletes,
accomplished actors and at least one president — Bill Clinton.
For Mexico, the clubs fill a profound need for preventive programs, Gamboa said. “The government of Mexico is not yet thinking about prevention. They
think about going after drug traffickers, but they don’t invest money in prevention. The right way to go is to prevent, prevent, prevent. That’s the
future of our country.”
Children growing up in Mexican border communities are especially vulnerable, often supported by single working mothers and left with little
supervision when the school day ends, Gamboa said. A study by his group has shown that 45 percent of the mothers who work in Tijuana’s low-wage
maquiladora factories are single heads of household.
“They have kids, they don’t have people to leave them with. What happens to that kid? He goes to the street, he becomes involved in drugs, in
prostitution, in many things,” Gamboa said.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Gamboa strolled the halls of Tijuana’s Club de Niños y Niñas, a $3.5-million facility in the city’s Loma Dorada
neighborhood, with its own gymnasium, music room, computer center, library and kitchen.
In one room, children were dancing to a recording by Francisco Gabilondo Soler, a beloved Mexican 20th century composer also known as Cri-Cri. In
another room, some girls were leaning over watercolors. And in yet another room, a row of music students clapped in time to a line of notes drawn by
their teacher.
Gamboa, often known as don Enrique, paused to watch gymnastics students as they ran and jumped, coming down with a thump on a line of mats. He moved
on to the soccer field outside, where Jaqueline Piñon Pacheco, a fourth-grader whose mother cleans houses and who father fixes cars, said she hopes to
become a professional goalie one day.
“There are many things to do here,” she said before running back across the field.
Gamboa was born in 1939, the fourth of eight children of Gabriel and María del Refugio Gamboa. His father was a jack-of-all trades who oversaw
construction projects and built a foundry. Tijuana, now a city of 1.6 million people, was far different then, Gamboa said: “Everybody knew everybody,
it was a small town, there was no fence around our house.”
At his father’s insistence, Gamboa grew up learning and speaking English, a skill that has served him all his life, both in business and service
projects. He joined a Tijuana Rotary Club in the 1960s and discovered his love for service while working with Baja California’s indigenous
communities.
“When I built a school for the Indian kids, I liked to see the change that I was doing in their lives,” Gamboa said.
His close collaborator on the project was Alejandro Villalvazo, a childhood friend who has remained at his side for the development of Club de Niños y
Niñas. The breakthrough came in 2006, when then-Mayor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid donated city land for the facility.
But without funds, getting started was tough. Gamboa and Villalvazo reached out to their social and business contacts, inviting them for cookouts on
the site. In-kind donations began flowing: One prominent Tijuana business owner donated all the cement blocks necessary to build the club, another
offered construction machinery, another gave tiles, another came up with the paint.
Then came the money. Major early donations included $100,000 from an anonymous U.S. supporter and $350,000 from Chevron, which was lobbying to develop
a liquefied gas terminal off the coast of Baja California.
The club opened in March 2009, and Gamboa’s continuing challenge involves raising funds to serve 600 children between ages 6 and 16. He said while it
costs the club about $600 a year per child, the organization charges less than $40.
Enrique Gamboa sees Boy & Girls Clubs as a solution
"The Tijuana club has become the model for all of Mexico.
Governors and mayors have called for advice, and now the country’s federal government has picked up on the idea. The federal housing agency,
Infonavit, which finances housing for the working class, now requires the construction of a club in every new large-scale development.
“What made it possible is knowing so many people, and knowing that whatever we get involved with is going to be done right,” Villalvazo said.
And something else has been critical as well, Villalvazo said: Gamboa’s commitment to the clubs. “If we would have had another person spearhead this,
I don’t think it would have been done.”
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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