Secondary Project activity at Niños y Niñas de México, A.C.

I joined anoth­er vol­un­teer in one of her sec­ondary project activ­i­ties yes­ter­day help­ing Oto­mi women at the Niños y Niñas de México orga­ni­za­tion work on they gift-card mak­ing project. They make cards that have an embroi­dered cov­er with a large vari­ety of designs. The women do the embroi­dery work then they can bring it in to fin­ish the rest of the card-mak­ing steps at a week­ly work­shop time at the head­quar­ters. We can help with these oth­er steps at the work­shop, because it is a labor-inten­sive process to make the cards. The results are fan­tas­tic-look­ing, with high qual­i­ty con­trol from the Sis­ter in charge of the project. It was very nice to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do work com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from my basi­cal­ly desk-job pri­ma­ry project work. I look for­ward to going back and work­ing with my hands once a week while I can be of help. I helped in basi­cal­ly all the stages of the card-mak­ing except iron­ing the back­ing onto the embroi­dery, and I helped col­or in some of the pat­terns and wind thread into small­er divi­sions for the women to take with them.

It’s hard not to buy a bunch of cards, espe­cial­ly after help­ing to make them. I’m going to end up with plen­ty of them though, since they look great and the mon­ey goes to the women. The orga­ni­za­tion in gen­er­al helps these indige­nous fam­i­lies, espe­cial­ly pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion for the chil­dren. I want to say more about this non-prof­it, but I need to make sure I under­stand the orga­ni­za­tion and don’t misspeak.