Every day, Sister Sindi and Marina walk through their Brownsville neighborhood, checking on families in need and welcoming new neighbors. This is how they met Maria, a young mother of six children who recently sought asylum from a town directly across the border, seeking refuge from ongoing violence and extortion from their family business. Sisters Sindi and Marina quickly realized with six children, Maria needed support. “The way you see them today is how they arrived. They have nothing,” Sister Marina shared. To make ends meet, Maria sells caramel apple dishes in the neighborhood, but this only goes so far. We asked the kids what they missed most about their home. Among the top were “our cousins, our house, and our food.” The 13-year-old boy added “Pizza!” The Sisters and San Felipe de Jesus parish in Brownsville have been fundraising to move Maria and her family into more adequate living conditions. They're also working to get the kids vaccinated before the school … [Read more...] about Missing Home

The community center within Proyecto Desarrollo Humano (The Human Development Project) is a busy place. Community members and their children come together to learn new skills, study, and complete group projects together. The center is run by Sister Fatima, a Catholic nun from India, who's spent the past few decades in the Rio Grande Valley, working with Mexican immigrant mothers. While there are many activities taking place each day at the center, the children lack things to do to keep them busy while their mothers are tending to the organic garden, sweating it out in Zumba, or in sewing class. During a brainstorming session, the parents said they wished the kids had more things to keep them occupied, items all kids enjoy – toys, coloring books, blocks. Sister Fatima has built a center that allows mothers to be mothers - and we wanted to make sure the kids could also be kids. A quick run to Walmart resulted in tons of bright toys, sports equipment, and coloring … [Read more...] about Something for Everyone

Hello hello! I'm Annie, a proud member of the Alight team that's doing the doable at the border. I'm excited to share with you a few stories from people we've met on this journey - and some of the good we've been able to leave behind. Every Tuesday, without fail, the women of Rayo de Luz buy groceries and use their own kitchens to bring a warm meal to the homeless community in Harlingen, Texas. They relentlessly show up with $20 of their own money each week and 54 tacos and hot coffee in hand. They always start at the back of the line. Because as Sister Shirley believes, “the last shall be first.” When the last person is served, the women quickly clean up and rush off to their "real" jobs. The 12 Latina mothers who make up Rayo de Luz are everyday people from the Harlingen community, many immigrants themselves. They're giving back in the small ways they can, one person at a time, with a warm meal and a warm embrace. “The most important thing is that they feel welcome,” … [Read more...] about Catching the Rays

If you stopped to tie your shoe while following Elisa of the Angry Tías y Abuelas across the Gateway International Bridge, you might get left behind. Elisa walks with a purpose, pulling behind her a rickety cart stocked full of personal care packages for the newly arrived migrants on the other side. She makes this journey six times a week, setting out on foot from her home in Brownsville, Texas, crossing the bridge into Matamoros, Mexico, distributing the care packages to the migrants who have come to seek asylum, and then hurrying back across the bridge so she can pass through American customs and leave on time for work. As she loaded me up with care packages outside the Matamoros aduana, Elisa told me to first take care of the women. Her resources are limited, and that's who she wants to help first. What's more, the care packages that Elisa has put together contain some products that men would find little use for... It soon became clear that one of the best ways we could … [Read more...] about A Bridge Between

Sister Maureen slams on the breaks of her beat-up, red pickup truck in front of a small, ramshackle home in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico. She asks the young girl outside if her brother is home, and the girl goes inside to get him. A moppy-headed teenage boy emerges and tentatively approaches the car. He is one of the many children in the impoverished border town who is “sponsored” by a community member in Maureen’s home of Progreso, Texas, just across the Rio Grande. “Where are your thank-you letters?” Maureen asks in her soft but distinctively Bostonian voice. “Se me olvidé.” I forgot, said the young boy. Maureen told him that she would return in a few days, and that he should have three letters written by then, one for each sponsor. “I’m gonna haunt you if you don’t,” she says only half-kiddingly as we pull away. Sister Maureen visits Nuevo Progreso about four times a week. Accompanied by her friends Vicki and Ken, they roll through the community, stopping at different … [Read more...] about Back to School

How do you begin to help when someone needs everything? How can you choose what to give when they have next to nothing? I felt this sense of helplessness when I met Veronica and her six children. She had newly arrived family from Matamoros, Mexico, and were being served by the Sisters at San Felipe de Jesus in Brownsville, Texas. They had claimed asylum at the beginning of May after being forced to flee their home, fleeing extortionist threats from the local cartel. Failure to comply with extortion already resulted in the disappearance of her husband, and according to her neighbors who warned Verónica not to return home, their oldest son, 13 year old Armando, would have been next. Verónica and her children left town with nothing, arriving at the border solely with the clothes on their backs. Currently living in a dilapidated trailer behind a Brownsville taqueria, Verónica and her family need everything. They need food, clothes, medicine, and a new home. So for this family, … [Read more...] about The First Step

There is a philosophy behind 365: “When the world’s problems seem insurmountable, we do the doable.” The problems that lead to displaced peoples — the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border included — are deep-rooted and complicated. And I realize that they're problems that can't be solved in a day. There are large scale, deep rooted causes that need to be addressed - but we also need to do what we can now. Rayo de Luz in McAllen, Texas, is a good example of an organization that responds to the “now” by doing the doable. A significant homeless population exists in this community, and while the root causes are complex, addressing the immediate needs of that community was something we could do. Rayo de Luz is a non-profit led by Sister Shirley of Little Falls, Minnesota. Every Tuesday morning, Shirley and her small army of women volunteers provide breakfast outside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church to struggling individuals in the community. The breakfast is … [Read more...] about A Special Meal

Howdy! My name is Bill Boegeman, and I'm a high school social studies teacher in Forest Lake, Minnesota. Some of my students are from Central America - refugees now living in the U.S., many of whom made the journey to the States alone. Their stories are amazing - spending hours in cramped semitrailer trucks and trunks of cars, hiding from the Federales and narcotraficantes as they trekked across the Mexican desert. It's difficult for me - and my other students - to imagine what these young people have been through, what hardships they have already endured, and the complexities they're faced with now. So I wanted to go see for myself - and do what I could to help teenagers and families who are still at the border, who are faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges. And to try to make a difference, one day at a time. I traveled with Alight to the Rio Grande Valley, a vast area encompassing the southern border of Texas and parts of Mexico. In some ways, it feels a little bit … [Read more...] about A House, a Home