2024-05-04 05:01:42
Near the Tacubaya station of the city metro, on Mártires de la Conquista street, is the civil association Happy Adolescence Avoiding Childhood Homelessness. It is a small entrance, very discreet, that gets lost in the bustle of the buildings that surround it. Once the door to space is opened, however, the world expands.
Not only because the place is actually bigger than what is seen from the outside, but because what happens inside makes the person who visits the place expand. In every sense. But it is not any kind of magic that the organization led by Leticia Cruz ago, but his inspiration seems to have been touched by destiny.
After entering and taking a brief tour of the facilities, greeting some of the young people who are currently involved in activities and being surrounded by the warmth of all those who collaborate there, Leticia receives me in her office, a simple space, of a color that does not want to highlight anything but the tranquility that the founder of the organization transmits when she tells me, without hiding details, where all this began, which, she emphasizes, was not easy in its first years.
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“What worried me a lot (was) that I had to see the processes of some children of street vendors from birth to when they were older,” says Lety. “I had to see how they put them in a little box, then in a container. (…) So, over time I thought that I would not consider those children candidates for street children.”
Then all those worries and concerns materialized into AFEECI, A.C., for his perseverance, above all, but also for the help that friends and colleagues always gave him. The latter is something he remembers with affection and gratitude; Her voice gives her away. Then she goes on to say that it was complex to start establishing a relationship with the street vendors, because they were – perhaps they are – distrustful people who, among all their chores, put aside their obligations as parents. She states it without judging, because she understands the place, the lives, the processes.
Amidst the gray memory of the kidnapping that the organization suffered by the Neighborhood Assembly, in which they looted the property and took away many of the things that, for the most part, had been donated to it, Lety joyfully confesses that amidst that misfortune knew the verses that begin “El infante”, a poem by Fernando Pessoa. And he recites them as if they were his mantra: “God wants, man dreams, the work is born.”
Thanks to this, he began, he says, to dream. And the dream also began to materialize, because in the meantime he received the good news that a German association had decided to give money to the association, then another donation that allowed the permanence of Maria, his right hand, and later monetary help from an association located in Belgium.
“The story is very long,” Lety interrupts. But we don’t give much importance to time. It matters how this organization was born, which in 2024 celebrates eighteen years since its foundation, which has benefited 234 girls, boys and adolescents since it formally opened its doors. It has not been easy, says Lety. During the pandemic, she tells me, they were about to close. 2022 was a year in which she saw how everything could have disappeared in a moment. But life smiled at them again.
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Lety told me all this in a space she reserved during an activity that Frody, a Mexican ice cream brand, has organized for the children and adolescents of AFEECI, AC. They have brought them books and, of course, ice cream, which they serve at the large room that serves as the kitchen and dining room, where every day they sit down to eat what they describe as very simple, but healthy. The books, for reasons of time, are left outside the main offices, almost at the entrance of the organization. They will be in charge of delivering them later, they will not let it pass.
After exchanging words with other collaborators and observing how all the people, in some way, stay, I can talk briefly with Alberto Hernández, Social Responsibility Manager of the brand, and he tells me that they have been doing these activities for about five years, in those who not only deliver books (contributed by themselves and their clients), but also toys, croquettes and, in October, even mammograms. “In some way we cover what the institutions…” he finishes, without completing the sentence, “is part of our identity.”
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2024-05-04 05:01:42