San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico – Entreamigos began in 2006 on a kitchen table in the middle of a San Pancho street. Today, housed in a giant warehouse recognized as a model sustainable facility, it is an active community center with classes and workshops, a scholarship program, a bilingual library for children and adults, a computer center, an extensive recycling program, a gift store and the Recicla thrift shop.
Here’s what’s happening at Entreamigos:
Celebrating Art and Creative Learning
Art education in all its forms is an important pillar of Entreamigos. Access to art classes allows the children of our community to explore the boundaries of their imagination, develop creative thinking abilities and enriches our multicultural community.
Last month Entreamigos celebrated our 15th Annual Children’s Art Festival. This event marked the culmination of 8 weeks of intensive workshops with techniques such as: paper making, acrylic painting, paper mache, jewelry making, embroidery, photography, collage, theater, dance, illustration, clay, and sewing with ironed plastic bags.
Fourteen volunteer artists worked with a total of 76 children of San Pancho to create the works featured in the exhibit. Congratulations to all the young artists who presented their works in the exhibit! And a huge thank you to all the volunteers who helped to make this festival possible.
Spotlight on our Featured Young Artist
This year we are so proud to announce Jenifer Mendoza as the featured young artist from our Art Festival. Jenifer is 15 years old and has participated in the festival for the past 10 years. Through her participation, she has developed a love for painting and her dream is to become a professional artist and see her works in a gallery.
This year marked a huge step towards that dream. At the festival she showed 5 pieces, created under the mentorship of Freida Fredenhagen, Entreamigos’ Creative Director. These pieces were sold at our event and all the funds from her work go directly to Jenifer to support her continued art education.
Additionally, at the event, Jenifer was approached by another mentor and famous artist, Evelyne Boren, who gave her a personal invitation to her 50th Annual art show in Puerto Vallarta the following week. At Evelyne’s show, Jenifer was introduced to some of Vallarta’s top curators who ensured her that they would love to see her work in their galleries in the future.
Congratulations, Jenifer! We’re so proud of all your hard work!
Special thanks to the Hearts for Art organization, who sponsored Jenifer’s exhibit at our festival.
Plastic Credits in the Banderas Bay
This past week our Environmental Team visited 13 different towns that form part of our Recycling Network, collecting 41 tons of plastic! In each town, individual waste pickers are tasked with collecting plastic waste, cleaning it and taking it to be weighed. Entreamigos, though a grant with BV Rio, then provides these individuals with economic support for their commitment to taking plastic waste out of our streets, jungles and oceans.
Congrats to Abraham, Alessa and Virginia for the time and energy the dedicate to this pilot program. It’s been a huge support both to the individual beneficiaries and to our environment.
School Supply Give Away
This month, our scholarship and jungle group students received their mid-year school supply packets. These 107 students now have all they need for this semester!
In addition to having their brand new materials, all of these students continue to receive daily tutoring and homework help. With the support of our amazing community, these students feel confident having all they need to be successful in school. The new supplies remove barriers and provide access. Thank you!
Save the Date – Environmental Fair
We are getting geared up for our 6th Annual Environmental Fair at Entreamigos!
Mark your calendar for March 28th – April 1st for a week of workshops, classes, speakers and more all related to important environmental issues. On the last day, April 1st, we will have an open house of local organizations and business with activities and products for the whole family!
Also, if you are part of an organization with a focus on the environment and would like to participate in the Fair, please contact us at info(at)entreamigos.org.mx.
Thank you all for your support!
We were blown away by all the support for this year’s annual fundraiser! Some of you came to our in-person event, some of you donated, some purchased art from our volunteer artists, some of you participated in the online auction and some of you did all of that. Thanks to you we were able to reach our goal and continue these important educational, environmental and community programs this year!
As you know, one of the various giving opportunities for our spring fundraiser was the virtual auction. Thanks to this technology we are able to reach many of you who are not in San Pancho are unable to attend our in-person event. This new possibility was a huge support in achieving our fundraising goal. We do want to mention that, in spite months of research, we were not able to find a platform that accepted Mexican credit cards in addition to US and Canadian cards. The technology simply does not exist, in spite of our desire to include everyone in all aspects of our fundraising campaign. If you know of a platform that accepts cards across all three countries, please let us know and we would love to look into it. We have given the feedback to the tech department of the current platform that we use and hope that technology soon catches up to our multinational community.
Don’t Forget to Smile
As we continue to order products and groceries online, we wanted to remind everyone that an easy way to support Entreamigos is through Amazon Smile.
Simply go to smile.amazon.com and enter Entreamigos as your beneficiary organization, you can shop with your normal account and Entreamigos
receives .5% of the price of your purchase at no additional cost to you.
Support Entreamigos
If you would like support this important work, you can make a secure donation via credit card or PayPal, by clicking HERE.
Thank you for making a difference in the lives of the children and families of San Pancho!
Entreamigos primary focus is to increase educational opportunities for the children of San Pancho in Nayarit Mexico. To achieve these goals Entreamigos runs an art collective non-profit store, a library, a computer center and a collection of educational and community based workshops and initiatives. Entreamigos is entirely funded by donations and almost completely run by volunteers. To learn more about our programs and activities please visit entreamigos.org.mx.