BISBEE — Officials broke ground recently on an education/recreation center in a housing community that helps displaced families in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.
|
|
The subdivision, located on 3 1/2 acres of donated land, consists of 42 homes with 157 residents, a 10,000-square-foot child care facility with daily enrollment of 165 children, and an on-site computer learning center. It is the first wireless Internet community in northern Sonora.
The education/recreation center is the final component of the project. Construction of the two-story, 6,000-square-foot building will take about eight months.
The center will feature an expanded on-site computer learning center, several smaller classrooms for adult and child educational classes, an office, a kitchen for cooking classes, a large meeting hall for neighborhood event use, an exercise room, and classrooms for arts and crafts and other vocational training.
Gil Gillenwater, founder and president of Rancho Feliz, said families living in the community need to make a monthly payment for the house, must keep their children in school and are required to do volunteer work.
“If you provide the Mexican people with the opportunities to raise and support their families with dignity in their own country, they don’t want to immigrate illegally into the United States,” he said. “They really don’t.”
To date, $1.65 million in donations has been invested into the community. About $320,000 in funding was donated for the education/recreation center.
Comments