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Please allow us to keep you up-to-date on our work and expeditions:

Wise Fool New Mexico sent three performers to Ciudad Juarez in mid February 2005. We arrived on a Saturday and performed a 1/2 hour show for about 30 kids and 10 adults in the yard of a recently burnt church which had been acting as a center for the San Jeronimo community.

The youth who attended were from a poor hill neighborhood of tin and cement homes where most people work in the maquilas. We were hosted that evening by local folks and Alex from the Comite de Obrer@s en Lucha. We talked alot about possible collaboration on an ongoing basis to bring performers and artists into this and other similar neighborhoods in the area where there are few services and no programming for youth, who mostly begin working in the maquilas at very young ages

. The next day we presented a longer show with puppetry, clowning, acrobatics, stiltwalking, live music and lots of audience participation as the main attraction at a day-long event to help raise funds to rebuild the San Jeronimo Church. The performance was attended by over 200 kids and adults from the area and was a great success for everyone involved. Before leaving we set a plan to return in April to perform again and also to offer workshops for the local kids in San Jeronimo and another community. Overall the trip felt like a good begining with a great deal of potential to create an ongoing relationship and to expand the project to effect numerous communities along the US - Mexico border.