One morning while having breakfast in the zocalo, my attention was diverted as I noticed many people walking past us holding bunches of flowers, single red roses and interesting floral oases fanning out like peacock plumage. My first thought was there must be a flower market some where nearby as Oaxaca is famous for its amazing markets, but as the day unfolded this same sight filled up the whole square and then every street surrounding it. There were lots of children with 5ft sausage balloons, laughing and hanging out with their parents who were carrying all the flowers, and parents hanging out with their aged parents who also were carrying armfuls of flowers. Birds were twittering at every edge of the square, which was all beautiful but didn't make sense to me on a regular Thursday morning. We later found out that the flowers were to celebrate ‘Mothers Day', usually a Sunday thing in the UK but here this year fell on a regular Thursday. The birds twittering was the subtle alarm for the blind that it was safe to cross the roads; old and young, wealthy and poor, healthy and disabled, locals and intrigued tourists all strolled happily together in the zocalo.

I had a penny dropping moment; that since I had been in Mexico I had hardly seen any baby transportation anywhere, no supersonic combi flash/dash/WE2 pushchair buggie three-wheeler strollers/jogger machines or plush carry car seats. I had just seen parents holding their babies in arms, wrapped up in blankets or strapped to their backs with cloth; doting dads also lovingly carrying their off spring around the streets...sadly a very rare sight in the most of the UK, apart from within the hippy sanctum of Stoke Newington, North London. In Mexico, toddlers are either clutched near to the bosom or taught to walk early with the aid of an encouraging smile, bionic adult eye and stabilizing parental arms. This made me think that this is it. This answers my previous curiosities about the tight family units, maybe this is why the family unit and respect for elders by their youth is so strong throughout this country. The physical contact from birth is ever present from immediate family and the surrounding community, a tradition that has by-passed many in the UK.

Later during that same mothering Thursday afternoon, an earlier robbing incident at the bus station started to bother me again. I was thinking of all the Oaxaca street kids running amuck at 5am on a freezing (school) morning at the bus station, none of whom were actually getting ready for, nor went to school! Instead, they were out selling on their own, some as young as 3 years old. I needed to do something positive - not to go about changing the world in a Sir Geldof way, but something small, to contribute something of myself. I am myself only a small blip of light in comparison to the vast problems in this world of ours, but I have a vast amount of energy to light up 100 football stadiums in order for other people to see what I see. I found an organisation called the Oaxaca Street Children Project. The organisation is not an orphanage - priests and nuns run these places in Mexico, usually in centuries-old convents, and they have a more tightly knit construction for very obvious protection reasons. To work for an orphanage you need to speak fluent Spanish and be around for a long period of time and have many good solid references. The kids there are either victims of terrible abuse or really have no family at all and a small lifetime of people leaving them.

The Oaxaca Street Children's 'project' is different: the kids here come from very large loving families who are just too poor due to birth control education/religion/economic climate and social structure, so they are unable to send the kids to school. The projects aim is to help find sponsors to fund a single child from the earliest kindergarten age 4 through to high school or even go on to complete college. It would be a full commitment to donate; from age 4 to 6th grade the sum needed is $150 USD a year, which is only £76.12. After 6th grade the donation rises to $225 a year until the student has left high school or college, which is still only £114.12 in real UK money.

The money raised goes into an individual fund especially for your one nominated child. The child is carefully selected by the administrators out of many on file, and all school uniforms, books, equipment, a daily meal (they can have seconds too) and emergency medical expenses will be bought from your fund for your child.

So what do you get out of it? Apart from gold stars with them in heaven, peace of mind that you have actively feng shui-ed your life. Now free of material clutter, maybe you gave up the chocolate/junk having lost pounds in weight but saved many karmic coins. Your donation for that one individual child creates a positive future for them, their family and immediate community, and eventually what an investment for the world. Every Christmas and end of school year you receive two letters from the child, including their school reports (all translated) and photos if possible. This is very real, not some bunch of hustlers photo-copying the same letter to all the sponsors. The child will write purely from the heart, so you could receive a simple Happy Christmas, Easter, birthday, ‘thank-you' or ‘come visit', along with random ramblings about the puppy they drew in class, to the flower they picked at the side of the road, to Spiderman's next adventure, Oaxaca-style. They are kids - poor or not, they all have great imaginations. Just think, how often do you get real letters sent in the mail anymore? You are encouraged to write to the child, letters are translated and cherished, stuck up with old chewing gum to tin/palm/mud walls at their homes or kept in a fragile dusty box. They don't have fridges or fridge magnets to stick pen letters up because they usually don't even have electricity or even the food put in such an item as a fridge. The children all come from very poor families, no electricity, dirt floors, tin roofs, lucky if there is even any brick in the walls, no plumbing, 10-in-a-bed and yet I can now say with my hand fully placed on my heart that I have never seen such happy soulful and grateful children.

The project is currently educating over 600 children ranging from the ages of 4 to 27. These kids are enrolled in 42 different schools and institutions of higher education. Returning back to my observations at the beginning, the family unit is close even amidst abject poverty. Mums and dads drop in throughout the day to lend a hand and the mutual understanding felt is immense between everyone. Something we in the West should learn a lot more about.

Some examples of success are: Luis Angel Velasco Santiago aged 11 who had a keen interest in sports, especially wrestling Greko-Roman style. With continuous funding, he entered various competitions, he came 3rd out of 350 competitors in Guadalajara district, then he won a gold medal in his field out of 120 competitors, he entered the team competition in Puebla and won first place.... watch out London 2012 Olympics! (Forward thinking needed here!!) This project has also taught various children with disabilities - speech therapy and ‘Mexican' sign language was taught by an Australian volunteer to a 3-year old deaf and mute boy named Angel (of course!). He is now a little older and his skills include Microsoft painting, he is amazing at internet searching and is now forming full sentences. His younger brother is also deaf and mute and has just joined the school. I saw older boys come to the project for their lunches wearing ‘Construction Oaxaca' t-shirts, as they are now in skilled training programmes. They spoke great English to me, absorbed from their letters from sponsors and an eagerness to learn English.

A word of importance.... If you do pull out of the sponsorship for any reason along the way this can be devastating for the child and their family, as they will no longer be able to attend school when that year's cash has run out. Imagine being pulled out from your school, losing all the daily contact with your friends and slowly losing your self-esteem. Not being able to learn new skills nor seeing new wonders after getting a taste for it, instead they will earn money by bugging the likes of us while begging on the streets to support the family, with no future. This sponsorship does not feed fat directors'/employees' salaries like most other charities do; this goes right to the heart of the children.

I turned up on a Saturday morning with a bag full of paper, felt tips and colour-by-numbers paintings. I met Alex (Alejandro Leyva), who is one of the devoted administrators along with the lovely Lucy. I told them a bit about myself. Most importantly that this cause was very important to me as during the best part of my teenage years, I myself grew up in a children's care home in England. It was the steady support of a very good form/art teacher and care staff who sponsored and guided me through my very black years until I left college. So I speak from pure experience as a white middle class English girl, abandonment has no class rules! I offered to help the project in any way I could, by working in the kitchens under the firm hand of Juanita, the project's amazing chef. She and nearly all who attend are from the Triquis tribes of Oaxaca, the smallest and poorest indigenous groups of refugees. Their tongue sounds Chinese; their attire is red robes weaved with coloured ribbon, which makes them all stand out in the markets and streets of Oaxaca.

Juanita runs the kitchen like Jamie Oliver runs his school dinners project, but without the swearing. She cooks everything from scratch; low fat, healthy food with no turkey twizzlers or fat chips in sight. Juanita makes breakfast 6 days a week for the 10 kindergarten kids on site; after eating they automatically brush their teeth standing on footstools to reach the sink. She set me to work for the lunchtime meal by separating all the micro small good pure lentils from the bad lentils as the packet had teeth shattering stones hidden within. It was a bit like counting grass in a football field, cross eyed. I took photos; I learnt how to make Dahl/lentil soups, prime beef with potatoes and crisp vegetables, home made salsa and mango custards. I took more photos and chopped, sorted, cleaned, washed, organised...I observed that salt intake was much lower than 6 grams per child in the comida corrida, which is the Mexican staple diet of many dishes in one. I took more photos and we made vats of homemade juice drinks from the herbs and fruit of hibiscus, guava, mango.... with fresh purified water and very little sugar added, it tasted divine. Around 80 kids who live within the neighbourhood and are also sponsored in schools nearby are encouraged to come to the project centre to have at least one square meal a day. After eating, they are all taught to bring their bowls to the buckets of water outside where they wash them cleaner than with Fairy liquid.

There is nothing wasted in this kitchen, what is not finished on one day is recycled the next. As part of my rigorous cleaning chores, I came across the last filter for the coffee machine in an old packet, which was stuffed in the corner crumpled and torn, I was about to throw it in the bin, when it was lifted out by thrifty hands, swiftly flattened out and put directly in the coffee peculator. Of course it held the granules in perfect place, what was I thinking to throw it away, how un-eco of me! One day Juanita was a bit moody, I could not understand what the problem was, so I carried on washing up the mountains of dishes, it turned out that when I washed the pots I was using too much water. The rules were to scower with soap ‘dry' then rinse in the bucket in the second sink, already millimetres deep with old water, then rinse for a split second under the tap as the water comes from a small tank on the roof which needs to be filled up once a week with a special long hose. Juanita was moody as I was using up the weeks quota in one sitting!

It said in my list of rules that one of my jobs was to make sure the kids said 'por favor' and 'gracias' when they asked and took the food.... I had much fun with this and it was a great icebreaker at the start. One thing they are all taught throughout is good old-fashioned manners. Volunteers are vital to this project, over 150 hours of time a week comes from people donating their time. If you are travelling nearby, please pop in, give art equipment, any cash donated goes towards the general fund which pays for the running of the buildings, equipment, emergency medical, utility bills, all the wonderful food. Or donate your time either in the kitchen, in the library, computer room, teaching English or art. These art classes are fun, this week run by Claire from London, where they made beaded necklaces, which is what they might have tried sell you while you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in public places.....but didn't have to if they were sponsored!!! Buy just one bit of beaded jewellery, it keeps a whole chain of people alive, fulfilled and happy.

That week I was privileged to have been part of a mourning ceremony celebrating the life of the founder of the Oaxaca Street Children project. The Mexicans really celebrate their dead, they even have a public holiday in November for this occasion. The late Jodi Bauman passed away 28th April 2007. I witnessed the velocity of how special this one lady is. Even in her passing, Jodi is respected and loved by many and now very sadly missed. What she left behind was her truth and beliefs in commitment towards giving these people a real sense of self within their own community of Oaxaca City. She was an American with a big heart, immense energy and wide vision. I felt moved to visible tears during the memorial for her, and privileged that I was the only non-Mexican tourist in the entire church. She was once disturbed by what she first saw many years ago, as I had been in the bus station. She helped out in small ways, seed-by-seed nurturing a single family, and from her devotion grew firm foundations that now run deep with many families.

My only way to contribute apart from giving a week of my time by peeling mangos and separating lentils was to take pictures of this wonderful environment, capturing the complete story throughout my time there and to give them a copy of the photos in a very full album. I had the best time. On a personal level my inner child has been nourished by this latest experience. We turned a potentially depressing situation in to a good one.

If you have any kids clothing, medical supplies (medicine for colds and flus are really needed here), art stuff or learning books in English and Spanish, you can send them to the address below in Mexico:

Mexico Address
Centro de Esperanza Infantil A.C.
Crespo # 308 Colonia Centro
Oaxaca, Oax.
C.P. 68000 Mexico

E-mail: oaxacastreetchildren@prodigy.net.mx
Local phone: 50 1 10 69
From the USA: 011 52 951 50 1 10 69

USA Address Oaxaca Street Children Grassroots Inc.
P.O. Box 29226
Brooklyn Center
MN. 55429