New Inter Campuses in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY – Following on from their last visit in April 2010, Inter Campus representatives returned this year to Mexico to check how the project was progressing. The Inter Campus delegation included chief coordinator Christian Valerio, who arrived in the capital after paying a visit to the centre in Chiapas, and trainers Ricardo Martinez and Raffaele Quaranta.

Since 2004 the Inter Campus programme has been present in Querétaro, a colonial city situated 200 km north of Mexico City. There the Marcelline sisters, headed by the indefatigable Sister Antonia, offer disadvantaged children from the Bolanos quarter in the outskirts of the city and from ‘Girasol’ school the chance to take part in organised sports activities on the seven-a-side artificial pitch inside their institute.

The activities are run by our coordinator Ernesto Ortega, a Physical Education teacher at the same institute, who organised a theory course with 8 trainers and around 15 students from the Autonomous University of Sport in Querétaro. The theory lessons were followed in the afternoon by practical courses on the pitch, with the participation of over 100 children.

As a further development of the work carried out until now, this year was also the opportunity for the delegation to open up two new centres in Mexico City, where the Marcelline Sisters are also present. Here in the capital they provide education for, and help in the social integration of, the indigenous Triqui population, who – originally from the Guerrero region – have settled in a shanty town in the centre of the city, just a few hundred metres from the main government building.

Fernando Martinez Bravo, who is the Physical Education teacher responsible for coordinating this centre along with Sister Marisol Guerrero Renaud, attended the course in Quetéraro. Assisted by Ricardo Martinez he took charge of his first training session on the dirt pitch at the Deportivo Venustiano Carranca.

The following day, at the Fundaciòn Renacimiento in Tepito, the most impoverished and dangerous quarter of the Federal District, another centre was opened, with the Inter Campus activities taking place on the small concrete pitch within a structure that hosts at-risk children. Here, as the director of the safe house José Vallejo explains, support is provided for children who need help in dealing with problems of abandonment, extreme poverty, lack of education and drugs. Inter shirts were handed out to the 25 children who took part in the first training session, which was successfully coordinated, under the guidance of Ricardo, by Omar, a social worker with a similar background to most of the children at the institute. Omar will continue to run the activity throughout the year.

Inter Campus would like to thank the following people for their hospitality, help and support: Alejandro Ruiz de Velasco, Franco Saccucci (a passionate Interista and indispensable guide in the city’s most dangerous districts) and Alberico Peyron of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.

29.03.2011