 |
| | WHO WE ARE
Centro Infantil San Pablo (CISP) is a non-profit, volunteer organization founded by St. Paul’s Anglican Church of the Iglesia Anglicana de México. It provides a high quality pre-school education to under-privileged Mexican children and prepares them to enter the first grade.
Betsy Schell, a parishioner of St. Paul's, years ago founded and operated a non-profit organization in San Miguel which included the kindergarten that eventually became CISP. She died on April 30, 2000, Mexican Children's Day, leaving a legacy of selfless caring for children whose parents could not do so. St. Paul's Vestry saw an immediate need for the children of the kindergarten, ably directed by Maestra Suzy Winkelmann. The church paid staff salaries for the remaining months of that school year and, in record time, formed an Asociación Civil (a Mexican non-profit agency).
|
| | By the fall of 2000 CISP rented a home in which we operated for seven years, having converted it into a suitable space for our purposes, with the help of Feed the Hungry, another charity founded by St. Paul's.
We purchased a lot in the same colonia (neighborhood) in 2004 and in June 2008 moved into our new school facility. The additional space provides an opportunity for volunteer activities in art, music, story-telling and mentoring. Our beautiful new Feed the Hungry kitchen provides a nutritious hot meal every school day.
In the year leading up to the construction and move to our new facility we saw the retirement of our director and have since hired new faculty (please see the "Faculty" tab on this web site). Our new director Patricia Palacios and committee member Claudia Vilchis completed the arduous task of achieving official status with the State Secretary of Education, making Centro Infantil San Pablo one of the newest fully accredited kindergartens in San Miguel de Allende.
| | |
| |  | | All of our children live in very poor conditions and are selected based on socio-economic status and need.
Most of the homes are in poor condition and barely qualify as homes at all. Some of these homes have sheets of metal where roofs would usually be.
A moajority of these children come from a single parent home and have several siblings. Their parents usually work for more than 80 hours a week for less than 110 USD a month.
|
| | | | | |
El Centro Infantil offers completely free counseling services and education to the children of these families. No familiy is turned away because of their income. Centro infantil offers these boys and girls the silver bullet against poverty and gives them a chance at crawling out of the desperate conditions in which they find themselves.
No child should be trapped in the slums of Mexico, and El Centro Infantil beleives that, by offering these children a shot at an education, these children can beciome perhaps the first in their families to break the cycle of poverty and dispair.
OUR BOARD
Besides the guidance of Father Michael Long,
Rector of St. Paul´s, the following individuals
volunteer their time and talents for the
successful operation of Centro Infantil San Pablo.
Adrian Ross, Chair
Claudia Vilchis, Long-term Planning
Linda Work, Coordinator of Volunteer
Bonnie Eriksmoen, Special Events
Lee Feuerstein, Fundraising
Tony Adlerbert, Feed the Hungry
Bill Lieberman, Treasurer
|
| |
|
| |
| | Centro Infantil San Pablo has had 9088 visitors since September 23, 2008 |
|
|
| |
