Source: Yes We Can World Foundation website and varied on-line reports
The Mission of the foundation is to empower migrant children through education and safe spaces at the US – Mexico border.
It was founded in 2019 by Colombian born actress Estefanía Rebellón and her boyfriend. Rebellón knows the difficulties immigrants endure. 20 years ago, at age 10, her family fled Colombia after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC, threatened to kill her family. As she was leaving her school one day, her parents were waiting for her outside and as they drove home, they told her “we had to leave.”
Her parents were well-known lawyers and had to abandon their home in a prosperous section of Cali. As she states during interviews, Estefanía recalls that “she put some clothes in a suitcase, a doll, and nothing else. My life and my memories stayed there.”
They left for Miami and soon applied for asylum. Even after they won asylum, things were not easy and her family had to start over and sacrifice as needed, her father, a successful lawyer and professor had to work at Wal-Mart during those times.
Estefanía learned the language and dreamed of becoming an actress in Hollywood. She has had roles in such series as “Jane the Virgin,” and in films including the short “On the Other Side.”
Her life and experience were a primary reason why she decided to help migrant children and to create Yes We Can. The foundation provides safe spaces and quality education to migrant children.
It is an innovative project that brings classrooms directly to children who are unable to attend school because of their location, legal status and/or economic circumstance.
Their first Yes We Can Mobile Schools Bus started operating in Tijuana, Mexico assisting an average of 45 children per day. The program has now grown to three locations across the border helping an average of 100 children per day. Many of these children have gone on to enter public schools in the United States and Mexico.
The foundation now operates Mobile School Programs in Tijuana, Mexicali, and Juarez, Mexico and reached their highest concentration of migrant children in 2020. They hope to expand their project to the city of Matamoros soon.
The organization has continued operating through the pandemic and have had zero reported cases of students being infected. Last year, their teaching staff was composed of 10 and helped 500 children.
Last year, the organization partnered with Duolingo, the world’s most popular language-learning platform with more than 300 million users. Duolingo’s founder is Luis Von Ahn, a migrant from Guatemala, who created the application so that everyone could have access to learn another language for free. The partnership will help bring the mission of free language learning to migrant children.
Although the new administration under President Biden has made a commitment to address the border crisis the reality is that these changes will not be immediate and will still drastically affect migrant families at the border. As families and children remain at the border, the foundation’s goal is to double their impact in 2021 and reach 1,000 children!
For more about the foundation, go to: https://www.yeswecan.world/
