Help Adults with Disabilities in Mexico Create Art

Members of the community of El Arca in Querétaro greet you and hope you are doing well and keeping healthy as the year is coming to its end!

With the continuing confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our life in the care home goes on with minimum contact with people from outside the community. Everyone is now used to this slower pace of life, but enjoy the once a week outing in company of horses in the equino-therapy sessions. To celebrate the traditional Day of the Dead, we set up, as every year, an altar with offerings to our departed family members.

As for the workshop, activities continue to be online but with sessions now focused on product development. Back in August, we prepared special kits of material and some simple equipment for our beneficiaries, so they could handcraft objects or paintings, or bake some new and simple recipes from the convenience and safety of their own homes. Most of them wait anxiously for these online sessions, and have become quite knowledgeable in the use of virtual tools. Rocío, an adult with Down syndrome did not have the mean to connect to the sessions, but thanks to generous donors like you, we were able to provide her with a smart phone that she uses to follow instructions and bake, on her own, the recipes that Isabel from El Arca send and explain to her. Francisco, on the other hand, uses all the scraps from the carpentry activities and comes up with his own creations. In addition, all the beneficiaries were provided with some plantlets to start up and learn to take care of their own herb garden.  

Members of the community have now started painting Christmas ornaments and preparing for baking special breads and cookies to be offered early December in Christmas bazars, of course, online!!! And a month from now, we will celebrate our 21^st anniversary of living, working, and creating with people with intellectual disabilities, most probably in an online celebration, keeping our safe distances and taking care of each others. 

We thank each and every one of you for believing in and supporting our mission! Help us continue to make a difference in the lives of persons with intellectual disabilities. Your contributions allow us to keep going with our activities despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic. We send you blessings from Santa Bárbara, Mexico, and may you all stay safe and healthy!!

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The community of El Arca in Querétaro sends cordial greetings, hoping that you and your loved ones are all well in these challenging times!

For the last four months, since the onset of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, we have had to make major changes in our mode of operations. In the care home, all beneficiaries and live-in assistants have been confined, for their safety, with minimum contact with people from outside the community. Although very hard at the beginning, little by little, people started getting used to a slower pace of life, enjoying simple moments of living in community, communicating with the outside world via phone calls and video conferencing, carrying on activities from within the house and in the garden.

As for the workshop, all activities stopped and beneficiaries were kept at home with their families. After a couple of weeks trying to grasp with the new reality, we shifted to a virtual mode of accompanying and guiding the persons with intellectual disabilities through a special program of activities that they could do from their homes. Their families became more involved and helped report back on progress and achievements. We offered special webinars on Human Rights and special care during the pandemic, continued with a weekly sharing session for the beneficiaries, commented all together on movies that we each watched separately.

Although these have been really trying times to many, good things have also emerged out. Jorge Luis, one of the most productive and creative painters of the workshop, felt at loss at the beginning, being away from all the supplies that allowed him to express his creativity. Nevertheless, his mother, Señora Yolanda, and other relatives started bringing him some painting and drawing material. And Jorge Luis started creating again, following suggestions from Diana, his instructor from El Arca, but also giving way to his own ideas and inspirations. In the few months of the contingency, he completed eight paintings, and even started selling some of them!!! We are truly happy of Jorge Luis’s achievements, and the encouragement and involvement of his family. We feel that he is walking towards living fully his own gift and assuming greater autonomy. We send you a photo of some of his creations during the contingency. We invite you to like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ArcaEnQueretaroIAP and/or follow us on Instagram https://www.facebook.com/ArcaEnQueretaroIAP to keep abreast of what is happening in our community.

In these unprecedented times when the whole world is suffering from a major sanitary and economic crisis, and several of our fundraising events have been canceled, the donations that come to us through GlobalGiving are needed more then ever and are highly appreciated. We thank each and every one of you for believing in and supporting our mission! We send you blessings from Santa Bárbara, Mexico, and may you all stay safe and healthy!!