TONALA, Chiapas state, Mexico (CCTV) — In addition to providing food and medical assistance, Mexican authorities in the city of Tonala are making sure children sheltering at a local relief center can continue to receive their education despite the loss of their school buildings to a powerful earthquake last week.
The 8.2 magnitude quake, the strongest to hit Mexico in living memory, has killed at least 96 people across the country, and left some 2.5 million people in need of aid.
In Tonala in the southern state of Chiapas, which lay the closest to the quake’s epicenter, local authorities have mobilized a group of teachers and provided teaching materials to the school-aged children at the relief center.
A teacher named Isabel said they are offering whatever support they can to help ease the pain caused by the devastating quake.
“We want these children to feel the same as they used to back at school, and that’s why we took this job,” she said.
Another teacher, Angelica, said classes vary based on the children’s age, but are not mandatory.
“We start by getting everybody to know each other through certain activities [in the class] in the morning. After all, they are from different parts of the country. Therefore, getting acquainted is necessary. The children have different personalities and they are not the same age, so they need this class to get acquainted. After that, we divide the children up into different grades and organize activities based on what they had learned before at school,” she said.
She also believes that having the children continue with lessons is a good way to help them find a sense of stability to overcome the trauma.
“This way they can, for a while, forget about everything they are going through, about being away from their hometowns, about the disaster, about the things they lost. They can use it as a distraction and relax. Perhaps we should all just try to help them relax,” said Angelica.
