Pastor-run shelters have partnered with educators to help - either bus children to an alternative school or bring in specially accredited teachers.
- Victor Rodas rushed to the teacher with his completed geometry exercise in hand and a smile lighting up his eyes above his face mask.
While the curriculum is not religious, faith animates these projects, as it does many other migrant relief efforts at the border. It also informs many of the educators, who recognize schooling as crucial to the youths' future, including their ability to socialize and eventually find jobs and feel at home wherever they end up.
Their shelter, Casa Oscar Romero, is named for a beloved Salvadoran archbishop, known for ministering to the poor, who was assassinated during his country's civil war and later made a saint by Pope Francis. Many housed at this shelter and elsewhere in Ciudad Juarez fled Central America; growing numbers of Mexican families from areas engulfed in cartel warfare are arriving, too.
About three dozen children from Casa Oscar Romero and another religious-run shelter attend Casa Kolping. First to third graders like Carol gather in one classroom, and fourth to sixth graders like Victor meet across the hallway in a large room whose windows frame views of El Paso's mountains. "Why all that paperwork if the kid is going to be gone in two weeks" is one argument that makes promoting child migrant education such a challenge, said Paola Gómez, Mexico's education officer for UNICEF. The U.N. child protection agency helps finance Casa Kolping as a pilot program, where attendance gets a kid transferable credit for both Mexican and U.S. schools.
Led by a Methodist pastor and his wife, Buen Samaritano housed more than 70 migrants that day, half of them minors. Children swept swirling desert dust out of the temple area, where the altar was curtained off to create the classroom.
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