Meet Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, a housewife from Texas who founded a pop up school on the US/Mexico border to teach reading, writing, math and art to children while their families wait for asylum.
For years Felicia worked with a local church group in Texas, crossing the border to provide food and books to asylum seekers but when the migration laws changed, leaving many families stranded in limbo, she decided to move to Mexico and set up the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers for the kids inside camps.
The school started as a series of sidewalk classes, taught by other asylum seekers, many of whom had advanced degrees and backgrounds in education. Rather than fold under the pressures of the pandemic, the school has flourished into an online network of 20 teachers who give Zoom classes to children inside the camp and to various shelters around Mexico via tablets. To raise the funds for the technology, Felicia used her own money and a GoFundMe campaign.The classes have given the children not only an opportunity to resume their education but a reprieve from the long days of boredom inside the camp. “To go to school in that situation,” Felicia said, “I couldn’t do it. And they keep turning in work and showing up day after day. That’s a strength a lot of people don’t have. They are still thriving, wanting to learn.”
