GCI Social Impact Grant Recipient 2023
Project: Bolt replacement workshop in La Huasteca, Mexico
Photo by Savannah Cummins
What is the mission of Escalando Fronteras?
Escalando Fronteras (Climbing Borders) uses sports and education to strengthen life skills and prevent destructive behaviors in children and adolescents in vulnerable contexts.
What is the history of your organization?
We are a community-based organization that since 2014 has been working in the same neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo León where we started. We know that the structural challenges of a society as unequal as Mexico cannot be fixed with mere motivational conferences, and it's a long-term job.
What are your current programs/areas of work?
1. Learning experiences at the mountains: We do exercise, recreational and educational activities. Throughout the day, the team strives to reinforce values such as: responsibility, fairness, teamwork, congruence, tolerance, solidarity, dignity and empathy. We do around 12 outings per semester.
2. Family education: We know that climbing is not enough to make a comprehensive change in the lives of the children and young people with whom we work. That is why we have decided to undertake, hand in hand with mothers and other civil organizations, an effort to strengthen family tools in terms of coexistence, addiction prevention and communication about responsible sexuality. At least once a semester, a prevention workshop is held to which parents from Escalando Fronteras are invited.
What positive impacts are you creating?
We found through interviews with the children's parents that 100% of the parents whose kids have been in the program for more than a year say that they recognize significant changes in their kids lives in two aspects: 1) the way their kids handle their emotions; and 2) improvement in their self-esteem.
What are your organization's goals/vision for the future?
Ten years ago we started EF with a focus on an individual level (taking kids climbing on sundays) partly because we didn't have enough resources, partly because we naively thought that an individual that is given motivation will have the capacity to change his life conditions. Now we know that this is not possible, at least when your life conditions involve structural inequality, poverty and racism.
After this ten years we conclude that only the community as a whole, through solidarity and organization has the capacity to change their reality. We made a step forward in the right direction five years ago when we started working with the kids families. Now we need to move even further and include the whole community. For 2023 this means to start a popular education program that involves neighbor meetings with a focus on creating self managed community projects. For 2025 hopefully this efforts will turn into the birth of a new autonomous organization in the community with its own agenda.