Students visit Tijuana orphanage
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=31054
Trip delivers food, essentials to orphans, inspires students
By Ari Bloomekatz
TIJUANA ? Twelve miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Tijuana's many orphanages sits on a gradual hill, overlooking a landscape lush with
beds of green grass and studded with patches of broken-down houses and tire yards.
Many of the 47 children who live at Hogar, the name of the orphanage, surrounded a Spiderman pi?ata Saturday afternoon, laughing and giggling while
they scavenged for lollipops and other candies that fell with each blow to Peter Parker's superhero alter-ego.
Some of the students from UCLA that made the three-hour drive to deliver donated goods to the orphanage speak to the children in short, broken
Spanish, asking them "cuantos?" (how many) pieces of chocolate they had and warning "con cuidado!" (be careful) when another student was about to step
on Spiderman's head.
Each year students from UCLA, most from the University Catholic Center, go to Hogar to play with the children and deliver food and other essentials.
On this trip, students delivered diapers and food among other things, but Father Pat Hensy said they often bring checks and cash because prices in
Tijuana are cheaper.
Hensy has been at the University Catholic Center for three years, but said UCLA students from the University Catholic Center have been visiting Hogar
for about two decades, averaging between one and three trips to the orphanage each year. Students from the Foundation for International Medical Relief
of Children and from the Social Justice Alliance also came on this trip.
The prevalence of orphans in Tijuana is a serious problem, said Hogar's director Father Steven Ochoa, noting that there are around 18 orphanages in
the city.
Some children were abandoned at the hospital, some were found homeless on the busy streets of Tijuana, while others were taken from their homes by
Mexican child welfare services because of abuse or neglect, Ochoa said.
"This is the first safe environment they've had in their lives," Ochoa said. "What excites me is knowing that we have a chance to give these kids some
basic tools to work with."
The orphanage has four bright white buildings with a few multi-colored stained glass windows. The highest building on the hill is a chapel, and the
children, most aged from newborn to 9, attend a Catholic grammar school.
Ochoa said many of the children are illiterate when they come to the orphanage, and its daily schedule is centered around education.
Each morning the children wake up at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for school at 7:30 a.m.
They return home from school at 2 p.m. and eat lunch, their biggest meal of the day, and at 3 p.m. they begin studying with a tutor Ochoa has hired to
help the orphans catch up with the other students.
From 5 to 6 p.m. the children have a break and watch TV, play on the jungle gym or see-saw outside. They then eat dinner, often a traditional Mexican
dish of beans, rice and meat, chicken or fish, and begin showering to get ready for lights out at 8 p.m.
Marta Garcia is one of the women who helps take care of the children in the orphanage. In her hair she wears "tela de encaje," a black piece of cloth
with intricate designs, and says she often feels as though the orphanage is like a family.
"We get sad and we also become attached to them when they leave. I feel like they're our kids and for them we're their mothers too," Garcia said,
speaking through a translator. Many of the children will not stay at the orphanage their entire childhood and instead will be placed in homes.
Hensy said the trip to Tijuana is important for students because they can learn about other cultures and see that material goods are not the important
things in life.
"What does make (the children) happy is not things, but physical contact," Hensy said. "I think (the students) are very moved."
Jeremy Lautan, a fourth-year sociology and education studies student, said the trip to Tijuana broadened his perspective on the world.
Lautan also said the trip was important for students to see the tangible change that they can make in someone's life.
"I don't think enough college students realize the power they have," Lautan said.
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