Crossroads News

Elementary School Supports Asylum-Seeking Families

Members of the Community Service Committee travel to Tijuana to donate items.
Colored pencils, notepads, socks and toothbrushes: These were just some of the items that Elementary School families recently donated to children at migrant shelters at the Mexican border. For this first initiative of the division’s newly formed Community Service Committee—and with the support of its Student Council—students, parents, teachers and staff members packed these much-needed items into 106 donated backpacks earlier this month.
 
“There was an incredible amount of donations; students also created notes to put in the backpacks,” reports parent Rory Laurie, who organized the event along with Randi Dressler and the rest of the Community Service Committee. “The staff, families and students were remarkable. It showed me even more how special Crossroads is.”
The project was in conjunction with This Is About Humanity, a nonprofit co-founded by Crossroads mom Zoe Winkler Reinis to provide humanitarian support to families on both sides of the border. The organization added warm clothes and a stuffed animal to each backpack.
 
“We knew if we could make the project tangible for the Crossroads students, it would be very powerful.” explains Zoe. “I went into a third-grade classroom where they were talking about immigration, and the students asked me amazing, thoughtful questions.”
 
In order to learn more about the asylum-seekers, the students watched a video of migrant children receiving donated supplies. “It was really heartwarming to see the smiles on their faces,” shares fifth grader Coleman Steele. “To know that other people care about them probably brings a lot of joy into their lives.”
 
On Dec. 10, Zoe and Rory traveled to Tijuana with volunteers from This Is About Humanity to deliver the backpacks to children at Juventud Movimiento 2000, a shelter for asylum-seeking families. They were joined by Elementary School parents Lauren Taschen, Jenny Lorant Grouf, Kasey Crown and David Comfort, as well as Elementary School Dean Ilene Silk and third-grade teacher Sofia Lin. Head of Elementary School Debbie Wei participated in an earlier trip with the organization.
 
The plight of migrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. has resonated with the Crossroads community. Last year, for her seventh-grade service-learning project, Cali O’Donovan collected items from Crossroads families and personally delivered them to a Tijuana migrant shelter. Seeing the lack of educational resources, she also established an online book drive for the children there. For her humanitarian work, Cali earned the 2019 Young Inspirational Hero Award from the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce.
 
Notes Zoe, “The only thing that separates us from these families is where we were born. That’s truly the only separation.”
 
 
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