Fundación de Apoyo Infantil (Foundation to Support Children)
FAI’s work with street children focusses on prevention. In addition, they work with children’s political participation, youth networks, and the “full development of childhood.” Here I emphasize their work on street issues.
In Mexico City and Guanajuato, prevention efforts occur largely in preschools. FAI coordinates a large network of preschools in low income areas, particularly those where statistics suggest that children are likely to leave for the streets. In Mexico City (largely in the inner city, desperately poor neighborhood of La Merced), FAI runs 56 schools serving 24,000 children from 3-8 years, the age it seems that most children are expelled from their families.
In the schools, FAI works on traditional educational and development issues, but they also address the questions that might send children onto the street: violence, prostitution, pollution, and family deterioration. FAI has developed a comprehensive curriculum, largely using the ideas of Maria Montessori, but integrating education for parents. (It is important to note that FAI does not formally direct these schools. They coordinate the curriculum and respresent the schools.)
FAI has discovered that the great majority of children in marginal neighborhoods, even if they are not on the street, are “abandoned in their own homes.” Parents are either working or simply away so often that they seldom see their children. As such, FAI’s schools try to provide the attention and community that children will not get at home, and try to teach parents techniques to spend more time with their children.
Save the Children provides much of the funds for FAI.
Contacto: Abraham Dayan
fai@faicentro.com; www.faicentro.com
PERIFÉRICO SUR No. 3840-1103
COL. JARDINES DEL PEDREGAL
01900 MÉXICO D.F.
TEL. 5135-2429, 5135-2430
