'Tis Always the Season
Our mission is to bring humanitarian aid and hope to the most vulnerable people and sentient beings in Mexican border towns and to support the volunteers who help to provide those in need with basic necessities, education, and life-affirming opportunities.
In this season of giving, Meta is matching donations up to $100 for those who become recurring donors. Please consider a recurring donation to One Story. Your monthly contribution provides invaluable, ongoing assistance to those in need.
An Example of What We Do
These three. Their mother died. Their father, a laborer in Tijuana, works as many jobs as he can to provide for them. Their 12-year-old sister gave up her dream of school to care for them.
One Story at a Time recently found an exceptionally generous helper who is going to sponsor this beautiful family. They will help provide daycare and childcare for the triplets, school for the older girl who takes such impeccable care of her little sisters, and relief for the brave dad, who has been so steadfast and loyal to his family.
It’s a good news day in a crazy world. Please help us help those at the border.
With gratitude, Linda Carroll, Co-Founder
A Brilliant Girl Without a Smile Needs Your Help
Will you help this beautiful, talented girl? At her first cello lesson, Shadia mastered the first traditional song in just 30 minutes. Music director Ron Wakefield knew she had a massive amount of natural talent.
When he invited her to take a photo to remember the first day of her musical journey, Shadia was reluctant to remove her face mask. When she finally did, she was only willing to smile with her mouth closed.
As the lessons progressed, Shadia read page after page of music fluently, and she also began to give lessons to friends in her nearby barrios. Ron began to suspect a world-class talent. He tried to take another photo, and finally saw the dire condition of her teeth. He learned of her shame and dread about being unable to smile openly.
Shadia’s father is a “casual worker” without a steady income. Her mother is a factory worker who will soon have to quit her job to receive spinal surgery and become bedridden for an extended period.
Shadia’s humble family, earning some $15 per day, currently has no chance of coming up with the $1,500 required to pay for Shadia’s braces.
Can you help this beautiful, talented girl get the help she needs so that she can share a smile as big as the wondrous music she plays?
The Perla Monroy Family in Oregon
We are thrilled, relieved, and humbled: after months of following their plight and supporting their efforts to reach safety, the five members of Perla Monroy family crossed the border and have lived in Corvallis, Oregon for more than a year! An extra boost of confidence allows us, with permission, to now use their real family name.
Read our profile of them (HERE), Aimee Ginsburg Bikel’s essay, where you’ll see them as the “Portillo” family (HERE), and Fernanda Echavarri’s diary in Mother Jones magazine of the Perla family’s experiences that are both poignant and filled with hope:
Look at These Faces!
We often hear so much about the overwhelming stories of terror and loss regarding the migrants’ plight.
Today, we want to offer you a moment to feel the possibility of hope, resilience, and even joy.
Because of the generosity of so many of you we were able to deliver hundreds of backpacks to kids in Tijuana. Deon and Eric Merten from Corvallis are spearheading the Backpacks at the Border project.
Let’s keep it going.
Thank you so much. Please take a moment to enjoy these beautiful faces.
Backpacks at the Border
We have an urgent need to help a particularly large number of kids, ages 1 to 18, who are arriving in large numbers at the border. They are receiving food but only have the clothes on their backs. Many have arrived from detention containers in the U.S.
We were able to deliver 250 backpacks to the Center for Unaccompanied Children in Juarez, Mexico, and many more to shelters in Tijuana. Urgently, we need more: we are collecting backpacks and items to place in them to help during this uncertain time.
Click HERE for our list of recommended items.
If you, your family, church, friends, or school would like to help or support this project, please connect with Linda…
“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business. It is not a luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability. It is essential for human survival.”
PLEASE DONATE.
Your generosity helps our effort immensely.
The Resilience Program
One Story at a Time is thrilled to announce our Resilience Program, with initiatives designed to help migrants on the border grow in many ways.
Our mission is to positively impact the lives of refugees and displaced women and children in Tijuana’s refugee shelters and in the area’s most vulnerable, disadvantaged communities. We offer literacy and art therapy to kids in the shelters and are always looking for ways to help migrants feel empowered and find a new dream.
One example of this is the beautiful bags we are having made. We have hired a refugee, Ana, from El Salvador, who crafts the bags in the tenango style. Women from the indigenous community of Hidalgo, Mexico, embroider these bags. We intend to help Ana start a small cooperative.
Why Us?
Your understanding and your support of these thousands of people on the border— caught between the lives they fled and the lives they seek — will help in direct, positive, and immediate ways.
We see the remarkable effects of your contributions. Your $10 provides a month of vitamins, your $20 those five new blankets, your $90 a new violin for a child to join an orchestra, your $200 a family’s opportunity to move from the streets into a safe community.
Know that our board members are not armchair fundraisers. Collectively, we are in border communities the entire year. And we take absolutely no salaries for our work.
The situation is extreme and often overwhelming. That’s why we choose to affect change with one pair of shoes, one medical exam, one scholarship, one teacher’s salary, one person, one story at a time.
Our goal is solidarity, not charity. The results? Time and again, as we continue to experience: your support is a way for us — migrant and donor alike — to reconnect with our own dignity.
One Story board member Jill Thiry started “Sonidos de Sanacion,” a threshold choir in Tecate. Says Jill: “Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely (President of Rancho La Puerta) recruited Maria Lourdes (Lulu) and Hermana Esperanza to sing with her. When a guest at the Ranch told Jill that Peter Yarrow wanted to sing at the border, she was able to reach out to Lulu. Within days the first concert had been scheduled, and rest is history. That was the night One Story at a Time was born.”
Rancho La Puerta Has . . .
• Donated food for the shelters from its organic garden, Tres Estrellas, during the pandemic.
• Given us gift certificates for day- and week-long stays to auction in order to raise money.
• Designed and donated a beautiful casita to assure safe housing for one of our helpers, Ron Wakefield.
• Sarah Livia has generously shared her vast knowledge about nonprofits with us.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely, along with her mother Deborah Szekely, founder of The Ranch, and so many of the Ranch staff continue to help us so generously with donations, encouragement, and letting others know about our work.
We stand with great gratitude for their generosity and blessing.
Just One Donation at a Time
Your support makes a world of difference.
Please join us.
One Story at a Time
Beyond the politics and logistics, beyond the policies and the legalities, our open hearts respond to the news of the refugee and migrant crises on our Southern borders. Many of our own ancestors — even our own parents and grandparents —arrived in this country as refugees, escaping violence and untenable living situations, desperate to provide a better life for their children.
Our compassion stems not only from our own histories but also springs from our natural deep wells of love for all of our sisters and brothers. We hear their stories and feel called to action.
Emergency Relief
With the help of our local “eyes and ears” ⏤ especially our beloved Lulu, who works full time with our foundation and her vast network of other people in the Borderlands ⏤ we identify families and individuals with pressing needs, and we mobilize to find a quick solution.
Bus tickets, medical care, scholarship money, legal aid, blankets, enrollment fees, and roof repair, along with food, clothing, and medication for the refugee shelters in Tijuana: all make an immediate, tangible difference in the lives of those who once lived in dignity and are now struggling to survive.
Rebuilding Lives
Through our support of three flagship programs — The Individual Stories, Helping the Helpers, and The Resilience Program — we stand behind visionary volunteers and their migrant/refugee community in building new lives, away from the trauma and violence they fled.
By learning new skills, and offering the gifts of music and art, they can sustain their families and create a sense of meaning and purpose that leads to healing and resilience.
Shelter, Food & Clothing
Your contributions have helped us in . . .
Building
bunk beds in shelters.
Providing
prepaid Visa cards for food and hygiene supplies for safe houses.
Delivering
boxes of clothes, blankets, and healthy snacks for people living in the depths of poverty.
Inspiration, Aspiration & The Arts
We support people by teaching music, art, and literacy to the impoverished as a way to feed both inspiration and hope. Many of the people we serve have suffered major trauma, abuse, and loss, and we believe the arts offer one way to help them cope. We have sent art supplies to safe houses for children, and one of our new stories includes helping support the remarkable work of musician Ron Wakefield.
Teaching
music, art, and literacy.
Helping
to cope with trauma, abuse, and loss.
Sending
art supplies to safe houses for children.
Education & Job Training
Although primary school is free, the fees for school supplies, uniforms, and transportation often add up to the equivalent of a family’s entire monthly salary. We supplement families that cannot afford to send their children to school. Another initiative is to teach women rescued from violent and hopeless situations to care for themselves with a new vocation. Your donations have purchased new sewing machines. With contributions to this long-term investment, many women will now have a new vocation they can use while transitioning from their previous lives.
Helping
abused women care for themselves with a new vocation.
Contributing
long-term investments to assist woman transitioning from their previous lives.
Supplementing
families who cannot afford to send their children to school.
“A glass of water has no value on its own, but the moment it quenches the thirst of an exhausted person, it turns more valuable than gold. Be a glass of water and quench the thirst of others.”
Your gift matters.
Discover how you can help change
One Child. One Woman. One Man.
One Family. One Hope. One Life.
One Story at a Time.
“. . . That night, Peter and I decided to form a nonprofit foundation to ease some of the suffering we witnessed and support the resilience and strength that had moved us so greatly. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem but inspired by the individual stories we heard, we decided to support the people and causes that had inspired us ⏤ one story at a time.”
