The Sidewalk School for Asylum Seekers offers five days of schooling to people facing displacement in the Matamoros Tent City, a refugee camp in the border zone between the US and Mexico.
Our Mission
The Sidewalk School for Asylum Seekers works to lessen the disparity between children who have and children that do not have a state. To do this, we ally ourselves with community support networks to provide education opportunities and assistance necessary to this end.
“We work with families where they are at, in the case of Tent City, we provide emergency assistance when necessary and when we are able, to ensure children live in an environment conducive to learning. ”
we fill the need
People are facing displacement in the Matamoros Tent City for months, some remaining there for over a year as they await the verdict of their asylum application to the United States. As they await this lengthy process, children and young adults are growing up without access to education, which is absolutely not okay. The Sidewalk School for Asylum Seekers recognizes the importance of education, and stands by the belief that all people deserve access to education opportunities. The Sidewalk School for Asylum
Seekers offers school five days of the week, during which children receive a lunch that includes fruit and no processed sugar (the refugee camp lacks dental care and the teeth of many children in our school are rotting). Currently, we employ eleven teachers, each of whom are asylum seekers themselves. This is because of the immense amount of skill and experience each teacher brings to the classroom, and because we recognize the importance of developing community within the classroom.