Young adult from local parish collecting donations for indigenous boarding-school children in Mexico

Courtesy photo/ Victoria Palestino

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This boarding school located in the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua, Mexico serves indigenous girls, helping them to have an education as well as three meals per day, which they wouldn't have otherwise.

SALT LAKE CITY — At World Youth Day 2018, Pope Francis told those gathered that they will find meaning in life only when serving God and others. Like Mary, young people must engage “in conversation with God with an attitude of listening” so that they may discover their calling in marriage, consecrated life or the priesthood, he said.

Every day since then, these words have resonated in the mind of Victoria Palestino, an Our Lady of Guadalupe parishioner. After attending WYD 2018, she became more active in her parish’s youth ministry.

“My family has always been involved and serving at our parish,” said Palestino, who this summer spent three months in the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua, Mexico. In this  region, inhabited primarily by indigenous people, resources are so scarce that for children to get an education and three meals per day, they live in a boarding school away from their families.

Most of the schools in the area are run by religious orders, and Palestino had the opportunity to serve in two of them.

“One has 63 girls and the other one, which is for teenagers, has 70 boys and 70 girls,” said Palestino, who learned about the boarding schools through a diocesan seminarian who was serving at her parish.

“He told me about those boarding schools and all the needs that they have … so I decided that, even though I had never been so far away without any family members or friends, I was going to go and help as much as I could,” she said.

The journey was not easy, but in the end it was very rewarding, she said. “It showed me that no matter whether it’s a little or a lot, whatever we do for the children is very satisfying.”

In the Tarahumara region, 43 percent of the population is illiterate, and one-third of children ages 6 to 14 do not attend school, according to statistics from the Mexican government.

“These boarding schools are a big opportunity for them … but they have to stay there all the time; they spend Christmas there,” Palestino said.

Living at the schools this summer awakened in her the need to do more for the students. Now she is collecting school supplies, “all the materials needed to keep the school functioning,” she said.

She is also collecting items such as balls and toys.

“I saw kids playing with a stick and a ball made out of plastic, because they have nothing else to play with,” she said.

She is welcoming donations, which she said is just a token of what people can do to help the children.

“Kids are so important; they should always be a priority because they are our future. Whatever we can do to help them, we should do it,” said Palestino, who is planning to return to the boarding schools at the end of this month, hoping to bring with her lots of donations for the children and schools.

She will be collecting donations until Dec. 18. To donate, contact Palestino at vicky77pa@hotmail.com.

“Jesus gave his life for us because he loves us. … For love, we ought to do whatever we can to help our neighbors,” she said.