Whenever I feel the slightest whiff of gloom sailing in my direction, I know exactly where to go.
Straight to El Futuro.
El Futuro is our
Mighty Writers site that serves kids in the Mexican community. It's located in the heart of the 9th Street Market.
So right away you're surrounded by fruit and vegetables and a rainbow of colors. That's an automatic lift.
Better than even that, though, is the buoyancy of this community. The insistence on finding happiness and success. The determination to ascend.
It's contagious.
You feel it from the kids, who show up at El Futuro every day in force and on time, and you feel it maybe twice as much from the parents, who want the world for their children and will settle for nothing less.
You also feel it from the Mighty pair running the show at El Futuro: program director Nelia Diaz, and her partner-in-bilingual-scholarship, Mario Meza.
(That's the Mighty pair above, with Luis, our favorite fruit stand owner.)
A few months back, you might remember-- thanks to a Mighty quick turnaround grant from the nonprofit
First Book-- we were able to send 700 children's books in Spanish to kids being held in a detention center in western Pennsylvania and to many more kids being held along the border.
The kids at El Futuro spent hours making bookmarks to go with the books. The messages they sent were their own.
"Mr. Tim," one of the Futuro kids will invariably ask every time I stop by, "when are we going to make more bookmarks for those kids?"
Soon, I promise.
How can we not?
The number of kids we see at El Futuro keeps growing. We intend to bring the power of writing to every one of them.
But, as you might imagine, the cost of growth can be challenging.
Luckily, with your help, anything is possible. Anything can be.
Tim Whitaker, Executive Director
At Mighty Writers we stand with -- and for -- all children.
