The reality of young boys living on the streets, alone, abandoned, and exploited, living a self destructive lifestyle that often includes crime, drug use, and sexual abuse, is something that should concern all people of good will. For Christians, it should be a call to action to seek out these young boys to take them from the streets and provide them with shelter and love. In Mexico City, the Salesians have been doing just this for many years.

Yolia provides hope and dignity to many young girls rescued from the streets of Mexico City.

As the Salesians worked to lead the young boys away from their life of desperation and survival they began to see more and more young girls joining the ranks of unwanted and abused homeless children. Something needed to be done to help rescue these girls from a future of even more suffering and pain than they had experienced in their homes and families. Fr. Jose Vazquez, SDB, the director of Fundacion Dejame Ayudarte, with a team of dedicated young lay women, began Yolia, ni–as de la calle, to assist these girls as he had assisted the young boys of the streets through Chavos de la Calle.

We want to tell the story of Yolia, first through adapted excerpts of an article on Yolia published in Mexico earlier this year, and then through the personal narrative of Amy O’Rourke, a Lay Missioner from the United States who has been working there for nearly a year at the time of this writing. Our hope is that you will be as moved as Amy has been by the work done by such committed lay women who seek to help girls who have been forced to live on the streets due to the terrible circumstances of their lives.

From the self destructive life they have lived, young women and girls are moving to a life of work, study, and, when safe, reconnecting with family and making authentic friends. In Yolia, ni–as de la calle, they have an alternative to help them gain dignity.

On a corner in the center of Mexico City, thousands of young people are sleeping, submerged in a toxic dream that they will be saved from this reality, that it is only an illusion. And from a safe distance, there are many onlookers who complain about and are suspicious of the street children, “those dirty and smelly lives that soil the urban state.”

Feeling smug in expressing their opinion about a situation that ought to make them feel ashamed, those who are privileged to have been born in a place that provided them with all they needed and where they were loved, see no contradiction in their attitude and the standards of the Gospel. It is urgent that we recognize more completely the fundamental reasons for this situation in which more than 13,000 youths and children live in Mexico City. And we need to do something.

Yolia is a house built specifically to give refuge to and to assist young girls and adolescents, from10 to 20 years of age, who have been living on the street; helping them to discover their dignity as women and forming them as humans and Christians for a new way of life.

This institution is directed by Monica Rabago and Yolanda Castro, who with total love and professionalism, promote the wellbeing and quality of life for the girls who because of abuse and the breakdown of their families, need a secure place to live and to discover their real worth.

The young professional women who coordinate the Yolia house for girls, have based their apostolate of service based on Salesian Spirituality. Fr. José Vazquez, S.D.B., director of the Fundaci—n Dejame Ayudarte, accompanies and advises them in their work and its foundational spirituality. Using the pedagogy of St. John Bosco, the Preventive System, based on reason, religion, and loving kindness, the multi-disciplinary team of volunteers and coordinators do their best to save the girls from a street life replete with drugs and prostitution.

Yolia Corazon de Mujer
By Amy O’Rourke
Yolia: coraz—n de mujer; heart of a woman. That is the name of the Salesian site I volunteer at here in Mexico City. The founders of Yolia wanted to bring Don Bosco’s work to the girls on the street in Mexico City to expand the work of the Salesian Oratories that are set up for only boys. Our mission is to help girls, from the street or high-risk family situations, to develop as women while learning to become honest citizens and good Christians. We are working to prepare the girls to be future mothers and educators.

I have been here six months already. I can hardly believe it.

Time moves so fast. My life here is totally different from anything I have ever known, but it is a life I love and am very grateful for. Every single day is a new challenge and a new opportunity to live life to the fullest; to follow the path God has laid out for me.

Adjusting to life here was difficult at first: the food was different, waking up early every morning was different, my family not being an easy phone call away was totally different. But I think that the hardest lesson I am still learning is just to be here. To be. It is such a simple verb, frequently used, but so important. In Spanish, there are two forms of “to be”: ser and estar. Ser is to be who and what you are. It is being all that God graced you with and all you have made yourself. Estar on the other hand is to be in a place or in a more temporary state. This is the form of “to be” that I am learning continuously here. When I first arrived in September, my director told me that most of my “job” would be “estar con las ni–as,” to be with the girls. As simple as it sounds, it is definitely the opposite.

“I often wonder about Ana’s future…” Amy O’Rourke

My mornings here are busy and at these times it is easy to be here. I teach English class, which scared me at first because, well, I was a neuroscience major, what do I know about teaching and making lesson plans. Now, I love teaching and am seriously considering it as part of my future. But that hour of class, followed by an hour of reading out loud with the girls, followed by getting the girls ready for school and cooking lunch (which is the biggest meal of the day), is the easiest part of the day. I am busy and doing something all morning. And because of my American up bringing, I am most at ease doing something. I feel useful. The afternoons, which in some ways are more relaxed than the mornings, tend to be more difficult for me. I am constantly wondering what I should be doing, or what I could do -- when all I really need to do is just be here; just be with the girls. Although I know that all I have to do is be here, I sometimes still feel useless and I have to learn this same lesson over and over.

In Yolia, the number of girls varies. Right now, we have ten girls that live here. Each one in their own way teaches me about how to just be, but no one more than Ana BZ¹len. Normally the girls we take in are adolescents, but Ana is just three years old. Through a series of difficult events in her short life, Ana lives with us while her mother does not. Ana’s mom is eighteen years old and recently finished a rehab program. She is working to someday be able to live with Ana on their own.

Ana arrived here two weeks after I did. She had lived here before, but when I arrived, she and her mother were living in another institution for single mothers and their children. When Ana arrived, she was very much still a baby. She has grown up so much so quickly, and her mother is missing it. Ana now eats on her own, she doesn’t need a diaper, she helps with chores and she goes to school. She isn’t a baby anymore. She is a little girl. As tiny as she is physically, she is very talkative and has an opinion about everything.

I spend so much time with Ana that I sometimes feel like she is my daughter. I am responsible for picking her up from school, making sure she eats, keeping her entertained and out of trouble all afternoon, bathing her, and getting her ready for bed. It is exhausting having a three year old. She always needs someone to be with her, even in the bathroom. Sometimes she needs someone else to help her, with carrying her dishes to the kitchen or picking out her clothes, for example, but mostly she just needs someone to be with her, to listen to her, to play with her, and to love her. Ana loves to laugh and play, but she does not like to do these things alone. Even if she is putting together the same Winnie the Pooh puzzle for the five hundredth time, she needs someone to sit with her and act like it is the first time every time. This is how Ana teaches me to just be. Sometimes she doesn’t need me to do things for her, she just wants me to be there with her.

Little Ana Bélen – a true lesson in love for lay missioner Amy O’Rourke

When she is laughing and playing, it isn’t so hard, but the fits she throws and the times she cries completely frustrate me. Sometimes she cries for something real, because she misses her mom. Mostly, she cries when she doesn’t get what she wants. And then I always feel useless. I am still learning that I cannot always do something. Sometimes I just have to be.

At the end of the day, after all of the fits and the crying and the playing of the same game over and over, I still can’t help but thank God for the incredible opportunity to be a part of Ana’s life, to be with her everyday, watching her grow and develop her own personality. But when I hold her in my arms and put her to bed, I also can’t help but pray that someday soon her mom will be able to do what I am doing in her place.

I often wonder about Ana’s future, if she will even remember me after I finally leave. She is only three after all. But I know that I will be forever grateful that our lives intertwined and I will never forget her or the lessons in life, love, patience, and just being that she and all of my other girls have taught me.

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