Hopeful Child
(Photo : pxhere)

It's a normal day in Tijuana, Mexico where children go to school and attend their regular class, however, this time class takes place not inside a school building, but inside a bus. 

The Yes We Can Mobile Schools project is part of the program of the Yes We Can World Foundation for migrant children who are trapped on Mexico's northern border while waiting for the U.S. authorities to accept or deny their asylum application.

In an article published in MSN News, the project was brought to life by a Los Angeles actor Estafania Rebellon who was once an asylum seeker 18 years ago. Her family fled Columbia after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia threatened to kill her family. After they were accepted by their relatives when they left Colombia it is now her time to show the same helping hands.

She formed the Yes We Can World in less than a month after she returned to Los Angeles. Rebellon participated as an activist in some political movements and organizations that primarily aims to fight back the immigration policy of Trump. However, this time this is something personal for Rebellon. Her battle is for the children who immigrated from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexican states of Guerrero, Guanajuato, and Michoacan where violence forced children to seek asylum in the United States.

According to Rebellon, some children walk for months to Tijuana and some were lost from their families during their trek. While others lost their family from gangs and organized criminals.

Sandra Rodriguez, one of the teachers in the bus turned into a classroom, said that "They come depressed, with the anguish of not knowing what's going to happen, with the uncertainty of knowing if they're going to be able to cross into the United States or will have to return to their places of origin."  

A teacher also played a piece of meditative music to help reduce the traumatic experiences of children. The teacher told her students to inhale and exhale slowly while raising and lowering her arms. The teacher's meditative music was effective and the noise inside the bus turned into silence.

The bus turned into the classroom contains different stories from children who are seeking asylum. Some of them were affected also by economic and political turmoil. One of the stories is about Isabel, a 5-year-old girl from Guatemala who shared her experience in San Diego migrant center. She said that the center took them from an icebox and they were given an aluminum blanket.

The mother of the child said that their asylum application was denied by the United States. She said she fled from her homeland because of her abusive husband.

The program started in July this year and have served 45 children each day that age 5 to 15 years old. They even need to set-up tents in the adjacent playground to cater to the increasing number of children and to provide additional classrooms for teenagers also.

Moreover, more than 300,000 asylum seekers were sent back to the borders of Tijuana, Mexicali, and Ciudad Juarez since January this year while waiting for the immigration court hearings.

According to Rebellon, the challenges faced by the immigrants echoed with the experiences she had and her family because even if they won during their asylum application, her father needs to give-up his work as a lawyer and have to work in a Wal-Mart. Her parents were well-known lawyers before they left Colombia.