Category: Programs

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Three Border Partners staff earn auxillary nursing certification

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Dignity and the attire of the health profession marked the pre-celebration ceremony at which three Border Partners staff members earned the right to begin the work of an auxiliary nurse.

Border Partners is proud to share that this past week, three of our staff members graduated in their year-long auxiliary nursing program. The women are Vicky Ibarra, our lead health promotora, Brenda Escobar, a mental health counselor, and Reyna Garcia, a new promotora, Alongside their other responsibilities, that range from leadership in community organizations to motherhood, they’ve attended weekend classes for the past nine months in order to complete the auxiliary nursing certification program. 

On Saturday, they participated in a pre-graduation ceremony. It celebrated the soon-to-be successful completion of their schooling. With three months remaining, they received their auxiliary nursing certification. With this recognition they can start to put what they’ve learned into practice. Border Partners’ board members and staff attended the ceremony to cheer them on as they accepted their certificates.

Implications of Auxiliary Nursing Certification

Juan Rascon, Border Partners’ General Manager (l), and Peter Edmunds (r), Border Partners’ co-founder flank Vicky Ibarra at her pre-ceremony reception for auxiliary nursing certification. Border Partners supporters extended their support and congratulations to the three certification recipients.

This is a big step forward for Vicky, Brenda, and Reyna. And their accomplishment will have numerous benefits for Border Partners, as well. Vicky received a scholarship from Border Partners to complete the schooling. She intends to use her new skills to help older adults in the community who cannot afford to go to the local clinic. She’s now able to give injections and monitor glucose levels for those with diabetes, for example.

Over the past year’s busy grant cycle, Border Partners offered healthy eating and nutrition classes in local schools. Those classes are now continuing in their second year. Brenda and Vicky’s additional expertise in these areas, is now supported by the practical general knowledge foundation they learned in the program. This will help our projects thrive. Their advanced education will introduce new ideas into our classes and programming.

Our community congratulates Brenda, Vicky, and Reyna on their dedication. We’re proud of their success. And, we’re pleased that they took advantage of this educational opportunity. It will benefit their community, Puerto Palomas, as well as all the satellite rural communities that Border Partners supports.

Summer Sports Add Spice–and Health–in Puerto Palomas

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girls tournament team summer sports

One girls’ team enjoys posing for a team photo op before their weekend game.

Kids love playing sports –no matter what the season. And, playing sports is good for kids. So, in the past, Border Partners organized sporting events. This improves access to healthy activity in Puerto Palomas.

However, once we got the organized sporting program rolling, parents have stepped up to do the organizing for the past two years. Border Partners works together with these parent leaders. We provide equipment and some financial support. Thanks to those parent-leaders, our staff can work on other projects for community improvement. And, of course, all of the young athlete participants benefit from the sports programming.

2024 Summer Sports

Athletics strengthens summer friendships.

Due to the heat of summer weather, this year’s summer sports games took place in the evening. There was one soccer tournament for boys (ages 14-17) and two for girls (ages 9-12 and 13-16). Each tournament lasted 4-6 weeks and drew lots of fans. Tournament games ran on either Saturday or Sunday with at least four games each day. Almost 300 youth participated in summer sports. There were about 100 spectators at each game.

In addition to the youth tournaments, there is an open-age men’s tournament that started in mid-July and will continue until the end of September. This tournament has been drawing 150-170 spectators to each game. Sports provide not only healthy activity for the athletes. They also provide opportunities for social interactions for the town community.

Remembering Juan Velasco

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business plan seminar

Juan Velasco, October 22, 1942 – July 28, 2024. Juan is seen here (right) at work, teaching a  course to launch potential entrepreneurs with the skills they need to start businesses.

written by Helena Myers

It is with great sorrow that we announce the death of Juan Velasco. Juan was a dear friend to Border Partners and his many friends in Palomas, Mexico, in Bolivia and in the US. Juan gave his time, talents and encouragement to many individuals. He also served as a mentor for the handicapped school in Palomas where he built garden beds and provided financial support for many years.

Peter Edmunds, a founder of Border Partners, said one of Juan’s best contributions to our organization was the business class he taught in the Education Center to small business owners. The classes began in 2014 and continued until 2024.

Juan Rascon, Remembered

Juan Rascon, Border Partners General Manager wrote this tribute to Juan Velasco. We wish to share it with you:

I met Juan Velasco and Suzanne Dulle eleven years ago. He was a dear friend to me and many people in Palomas. He had a deep love for this community and its inhabitants. He made a difference in the lives of many.

He taught a business class for free the last several years. In addition, he helped some business students with a personal loan so they could start to expand their own business. One of his students, Eduardo Madrid was able to expand his ice cream business. He’s since become a successful business owner.

I have applied some of the things I learned from his classes. This has really helped in the way I handle finances. And it is making a great difference in my life.

Juan and Suzanne have always been very supportive of Border Partners projects and have made regular donations to our meals on wheels and food baskets programs. He had hoped one day to move to Palomas permanently. He looked forward to spending more time with the Palomas people who had become his friends.

My heart was broken when I found out he had passed away. Juan touched many lives and made a positive impact on us. He will be missed. I offer my most sincere condolences to Suzanne and their families. REST IN PEACE.”

Juan Velasco’s obituary is inspiring. Learn more about the life of this outstanding man. You can view his obituary here. 

As Summer Heats Up, “Summer School 2024” Students Cme Together

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Summer school 2024 gives students a chance to keep learning.

Now that school is out, Border Partners’ summer school is back in session. We’ve been putting on a summer school for Palomas students in the first two weeks of July since 2012. Except for a Covid-related pause in activities, it continues to be a great success every year.

This last week, we gathered 51 attendees from the local elementary schools. Alongside volunteers from the Prepa (high school) and Border Partners’ team of promotoras (health promoters), the students completed arts and crafts and health and nutrition-themed coloring sheets. They participated in computer classes, a science experiment, and enjoyed many other activities.

Special School Recognition Award

We are fortunate to have received a generous grant from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation to work the entire past school year offering health and nutrition programming to all students across Palomas’ five schools. Following this, Ramon Espinoza elementary school recognized Border Partners with an award for our years of service in the school. It reads:

“The Elementary School Ramon Espinoza Villanueva grants this recognition to Border Partners for their commitment and work en the school breakfast program and in various nutrition workshops and classes.
Thanks for helping us to transform the lives of our students and their families!
Puerto Palomas. July 3, 2024”

We will proudly display this award from Ramon Espinoza Elementary School for our working partnership with them.

We look forward to many more years in partnership, inside and outside of the school term.

Border Partners’ Rainwater Tanks Bring New Life to Our Community Gardens

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José Luis Muñoz, Construction and Maintenance Coordinator, toils on this construction project–one of five new rainwater holding tanks.

Our gardening team recently finished construction of five new rainwater holding tanks. Now there is one rainwater tank at each site of our gardens throughout the town of Puerto Palomas.

These rainwater tanks are found in our gardens located:

  • near the library. This tank supports the garden that provides fresh produce for our senior meals.
  • at the preparatory high school, Ramon Espinoza school,
  • at the local secondary school, and
  • at the Ford primary school.
    The school tanks will support crops that feed the school children.

Rainwater Tank Benefits

These tanks can each hold 4,700 gallons (17,700 Liters) of water. Each one is outfitted with mechanisms so that any excess water flows to the gardens. “Harvesting” the water is obviously cost-effective. In addition, it provides better water for growing vegetables than the city water we currently use.  Municipal water is too salty and contains excess arsenic and fluoride. As of last week, 2.3  inches of rainfall has fallen so far in 2024. This fills the new tanks with rainwater. They’re all in use: saving water, reducing costs, and enriching plant life in each of these locations. 

The fruit trees we’ve planted in town will also benefit. They’re especially sensitive to the salts in the city water and die earlier than normal when watered from the municipal water system.

Benefits of Home-made Tanks

Rather than purchasing water holding tanks pre-made, our construction and gardening team labored intensely on this project, saving considerable expense. Our crew used a building method which combines the use of chicken wire and some mesh with a cement coating. Because this method uses less cement, it is significantly less expensive. Modeling this cost-saving method offers an example to residents in this low-income community. This increases the likelihood that they, too, could one day afford to build one for themselves.

An additional advantage this construction design offers is environmental. Cement production is a major contributor to industrial air pollution and climate change. By minimizing cement in the construction of these five large tanks, we promote a healthier environment. This aligns with our goal to promote more environmentally-friendly methods of operation. 

This project lasted throughout the in the extreme summer heat Northern Mexico is experiencing these last few weeks. These Border Partners staffers committed themselves to the toil required to complete a difficult and extensive project. Not constructed from a prefabricated or commercial kit, the construction workers fabricated the rainwater tanks from the ground up by hand, using local materials.

We’re happy to implement this sustainable solution. It will have long-term benefits for our garden produce yields. In addition, the tanks will positively affect public health and wellness in Puerto Palomas.

Click the photo below to see a rainwater tank construction process album. Watch the tank appear from foundation to finished product:

 
Rainwater tank construction

Paso del Norte Health Foundation To Fund Another Year of Healthy Eating in Palomas

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nutrition class elementary school

Children in elementary school benefit from healthy nutrition education. This class enjoyed fruit for a treat.

Border Partners is pleased to announce that we’ve received approval for a second year of funding from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation under their Healthy Eating priority. This Healthy Eating grant will enable us to continue and extend the work we’ve accomplished to further nutrition education in Palomas.

Healthy Eating Grant

This child received her own serving of healthy foods.

During this past year, while using the healthy eating grant, our staff has delivered a comprehensive program of both nutrition and gardening classes to students of all ages in the schools in Palomas. The cooks for the schools’ food service programs also received training about how to include more healthy foods in the lunches they serve. And the teachers attended trainings to learn why it’s so very important to educate children about healthy eating habits.

Each of the five schools now has a year-round greenhouse filled with seasonal, healthy vegetables. The students of the schools plant the vegetables, and the school cooks can use them in lunches. In addition to our biannual community health fair, this grant enabled us to conduct a health fair at each school, targeting each program for their own special needs. We also participated in two health fairs for all the preschools in the area.

Looking to 2025

Now, thanks to continued support from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation – our partner for nearly a decade – we can expand our activities and offer Palomas students more opportunities to learn and grow. We are so grateful for the longstanding support from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation for the Healthy Eating grant.

Obesity, diabetes and hypertension are serious health concerns in Mexico. There is much work to do to prevent disease through healthy eating. Equipped with the Healthy Eating grant, we’re looking forward to working together to prepare students for a healthy future.

Give Grandly 2024: Your Donations Help Real People

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Border Partners looks for diverse sources of money to support our programs in Palomas but more than half of our budget comes from generous individuals like you. Three of the programs paid for with donations from individuals serve vulnerable people in Palomas: the elderly, youth and needy families. All of the money we raise during the annual Give Grandly campaign for 2024 will go directly to help these people. We want you to meet who benefits from each of these programs.

Elderly can eat

Francisco Beltran receives his daily hot meal from the meals on wheels program.

Francisco Beltran is 78 years old and does not have his own home nor any family nearby. Some neighbors allow him to sleep at night in a room in their house. He has no way to fix food for himself. Francisco is grateful to receive a plate of hot, healthy food every weekday from Border Partners’ kitchen. Besides Francisco, our Senior Meals Program serves 32 other seniors. We served 6775 meals in 2023.

Youth grow 

Pedro Casillas, a 15 year old high school student, attended our after-school program this spring because he wanted to learn first aid. He wants to be able to help people who might get hurt. That class and four others this spring were Border Partners’ first effort at providing youth services besides sports tournaments. We hope it will be the beginning of addressing a major problem in Palomas. Increasing numbers of drug dealers roam the streets looking for kids with nothing to do. And there is not much for kids to do in Palomas besides school. There’s no regular organized sports, no clubs, few jobs for teens.

Our dream is to open a youth center, a place for kids to “hang out,” take a class that might lead to a job, or volunteer to help with a project. It will be staffed by adults who enjoy working with youth. We think it will make a big difference in the lives of youth in Palomas. Donations from individuals will make this dream a reality.

Struggling families receive help

Dora Perez and children

Dora Perez and her husband live with their six children. This food insecure family is a good example of those who benefit from our monthly food baskets. Neither of them have any steady work and have trouble making ends meet. She receives a food basket from Border Partners each month. It consists of a bag of potatoes, a bag of beans, a bag of rice, two packages of noodles, two cans of tomato puree, eggs, toilet paper, soap, and oil. She is grateful for this help “so I can give my children a meal and pay for my water and electricity.” Border Partners supplied a total of 938 food baskets in 2023. 

We can help people with real needs because generous donors contribute resources. Please consider a contribution to our GiveGrandly 2024 campaign: CONTRIBUTE HERE NOW.

Providing more and better access to healthy food in Palomas

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Joel Carreón, Botanist-Garden Specialist, (left) employs a “hands-on” method to teach the elementary school children how to grow mushrooms.

Spring has sprung here in the Desert Southwest as it has in many places across the Northern Hemisphere. Our thoughts turn to plants and growing healthy food.

From the very beginnings of Border Partners in 2008, we’ve asked local people what they needed most in their community. Their answer is consistently: “more and better access to healthy food.” We’ve been working on that goal ever since 2008 – for almost 16 years now.

So, we want to focus our news on all the work Border Partners does each month–not only in the S pring–to achieve that goal.

March 2004 Food Focus

Just in March, 2024, alone:

Just one of 660 healthy meals we delivered last month!

● The promotoras (health educators) prepared and delivered 660 healthy meals to isolated seniors.

● The gardeners delivered a total of 100 pounds of green vegetables to various places in the community including all five schools for use in the school lunches and for children to take home. Some of these veggies were given out in the main plaza on Saturdays and at our office during the week. They were also used in the senior lunches and the nutrition classes.

● We also gave each of the schools a small cash supplement to purchase other healthy foods (like fruit) for their school lunches.

We’ve completed spring maintenance on our greenhouses. They’re bursting with healthy greens to share.

● Our nutrition teachers taught lessons each week to students at the middle school, the high school and a preschool. Each lesson gave information about healthy eating and included healthy food to sample. One lesson was about the importance of eating healthy fats (think avocado!) and to limit unhealthy fats (think butter!).

● Our gardeners taught our staff and elementary school students how to start growing mushrooms. Since they are a good source of protein, we would like to promote growing them as a healthy food source.

● They also taught middle schoolers about how to make compost to enrich the soil for growing vegetables.

● The gardeners accomplished spring greenhouse maintenance. They removed the plastic cover we use to keep the greenhouses warm in the winter from our three large community greenhouses. All of our smaller greenhouses at schools in Palomas and the three school greenhouses at small communities around Palomas also needed to be uncovered. Until next fall, they will only be covered with shade cloth to keep the plants cooler.

Project Manager Viky Ibarra named Outstanding Woman 2024 in Ascensión Municipality

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Municipality President Ivón de la Hoya (l) presents Viky Ibarra (r) the award certificate “Outstanding Woman 2024.”

Border Partners Project Manager Viky Ibarra received a distinction of honor as “Outstanding Woman 2024.” It was awarded this month from the presidency of Ascensión by Ivón de la Hoya. Ascención is the capital of Ascensión Municipality, the municipality to which Puerto Palomas belongs. This honor celebrated International Women’s Day in Chihuahua, Mexico at the Ascensión Civic hall.

Viky’s outstanding social work in the community earned the outstanding recognition. The award highlights her service to the community and her activities to support older adults and more vulnerable people in the state.

Viky humbly states, “I am happy that they’ve given me this recognition.”

Border Partners General Manager Juan Rascon does not hold back, stating: “I am very proud of Viky, and she deserves to be recognized. Viky is founder and president of her community’s Lions Club and is also secretary and administrator of Puerto Palomas volunteer firefighters.”

Viky has been employed at Border Partners for 12 years. She worked eight years as a health promoter, and has served the last three years as the coordinator of the team of health promoters. As coordinator, she tracks expenses, makes the schedule, and files monthly reports. She also visits local schools to promote public health awareness and healthy eating. In addition, she serves Border Partners as Assistant General Manager.

Viky Ibarra lives with her partner David Casillas, Captain of volunteer firefighters. They have two children, Jennifer Lopez and Emmanuel Casillas. Her family, she says, are proud of her achievements and goals.

Women Leadership

Polly Edmunds, Border Partners founder, saw Viky’s leadership skills grow. She recalls Viky’s early days of employment “as a shy, quiet young woman.” But, Polly has seen Viky develop. She says that Viky has become “a self-confident, respected leader often initiating ideas for projects and suggesting solutions to difficult problems.”

As Viky looks to the future, she hopes to continue contributing more of herself, in her own words: “to my people and to be able to continue helping whomever needs it. She appreciates the support she feels from her Border Partners colleagues. She finds meaning in her work through contact with her community and in the opportunity to help and serve them.

We at Border Partners feel very fortunate to have Viky on our team.

Viky’s award as outstanding social worker joined awards to four other women of the Ascensión Municipality, each outstanding in a unique field:
• Sportsman: Hortensia Marín Luján, better known as Tencha
• Professional: Prof. Rosa de la Luz Carreon Rubio, teacher Rosy
• Businesswoman: Armida Herrera Simental
• Entrepreneur: Ramona Rubio Pérez, better known as Rosita.

The group of women honored by the presidency of the municipality of Ascensión.

Learning after school enriches teen lives

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Fire hoses, ambulances, first aid training, basketball. Kids in Palomas are getting some new opportunities through an innovative offering of after-school classes this winter. Teens in Palomas don’t have opportunities to use their free time productively. There are no groups organizing classes. No teen center. No regular organized sports.

Unfortunately, there are drug gangs in town who try to influence teens after school. Border Partners has long worried about this. But, we have not had money or a plan to address it. In January, our Program Manager, Victoria Ibarra, decided to just go ahead and start some classes with a small budget. They’ve been a huge success.

Teen Classes Afterschool

The first classes are for groups of ten teens every day after school. The classes have covered a variety of areas:

  • Fire Fighting: The kids got to wear the heavy protective gear, haul out the hoses and practice shooting water and then roll the hoses up. They washed the fire truck yesterday.
  • Ambulance/Paramedics (first aid and using the equipment), CPR
  • Medical: Dr. Lina is giving workshops on contraceptive methods, anxiety and depression. They learned how to suture a wound, and they are making prevention posters.
  • Outdoor games. Girls and boys played basketball and soccer.
  • Drawing. A small group class with a local artist.

After seeing the success of this pilot project, everyone wants to figure out how Border Partners can do more programming for kids.

Enjoy these photos of kids having fun and learning!