Concerned Bruins sponsor food, clothes drive

Concerned Bruins sponsor food, clothes drive

Hunger, disease plague children in Valle Verde Mexico

By Jennifer K. Morita

When UCLA students Andi Meck and Aqualina Soriano heard that 27
Mexican children from Valle Verde, Mexico had died from
malnutrition and disease, they went to check out the situation
themselves.

By the time Meck and Soriano arrived in the colonia, or
shantytown, they were told that nine more children’s graves had
been dug.

They saw hungry children playing near toxic waste dumps.

They witnessed parents searching through garbage.

They watched a woman named Antonia struggle to feed 100 children
one meal a day with only a four-burner stove and a broken oven.

Sights such as these prompted Meck and Soriano to begin a
campus-wide clothes and food drive for starving children who live
in the poverty stricken area.

"They used to call it the Tent City," said Meck, who is the
Multi-Cultural Society co-director. "About a year and a half ago,
really bad floods hit Tijuana and people moved to the higher
grounds of Valle Verde. Those who could afford to go back to
Tijuana and rebuild did and those who couldn’t stayed.

"We’re talking about a whole community that specifically started
because people didn’t have money," said Meck.

Now UCLA’s Multi-Cultural Society, Environmental Coalition,
MEChA and Latin American Student Alliance are accepting clothes,
food, money and medicine to take to children and families in
Colonia de Valle Verde.

"It’s really sad but it’s hopeful, too," said Soriano. "You see
people like Antonia working to feed the children. But she can’t do
it by herself."

Since the first trip to Mexico, other UCLA students and groups
got involved and more trips were made to Valle Verde.

"It really pissed me off," said Multicultural Society member
Julie Strand. "I take so much for granted. It really made me want
to help them as much as I can."

Valle Verde has no running water, indoor plumbing or paved
roads. Hungry children line up outside the soup kitchen once a day
to receive small portions of food.

"When I went we brought a turkey and I was the one carving it,"
said Strand. "The portions were tiny but it was a real treat for
them."

Children run around unsupervised all day while their parents
work in maquiladoras, the border sweatshops, earning an average of
$30 a week, said Soriano.

"There’s a strip of free-trade zones that a lot of American
corporations move into," Soriano said. "America has some
responsibility for creating the conditions that are there. They go
across the border so they don’t have to pay higher wages, and for
the families in Valle Verde these sweatshops provide the only
jobs.

"They make barely enough to survive," said Soriano.

The campus groups hope to make the food and clothing drive an
on-going project to provide continual aid for the Valle Verde
children and families, according to Strand.

Donations can be dropped off in a box along Bruin Walk, or at
boxes located inside all the dorms. In addition, volunteers will be
going to apartment buildings this weekend asking for food and
clothing.

For more information contact the Environmental Coalition office
at 206-4438 located in 330A Kerckhoff Hall.