Community foundation fights poverty on the border

Saturday, 26 September 2009 03:59

If you take a trip to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico you can see some of the least fortunate people in the town living in homes made of cardboard and sheets of metal on unpaved roads.

Life is a 15-round heavyweight fight for these people, but Kari Davies-Mason, 25, is in their corner helping them punch back as much as she can.

Mason is a native of New York but that doesn't mean she isn’t willing to step in the ring with them.

She’s there working in hope of giving the people, mostly migrants, a chance at a better life.

For a little more than a year, Mason has been the Program Associate at The Santa Cruz Community Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed at improving the welfare of the communities in the Santa Cruz County in southern Arizona as well as working with La Fundación del Empresariado Sonorense AC in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.

Mason acts as a liaison between the individuals and organizations that provide resources to impoverished people in the borderlands and the non-profit organizations that distribute these resources.

It might seem suprising that Mason, who was born in Albany, N.Y. and educated at the University of North Carolina, would work for a foundation in Nogales, Ariz.

But when she helped a friend move from Chapel Hill, N.C. to Tucson, Ariz. after graduating from UNC in 2006, she was hooked on the desert and the people she could help there.

“I’ve always been interested in the border, so when I drove her out here I loved it and moved here a month later,” Mason said.

Mason particularly enjoys the mixture of cultures and her daily interactions with the people of the region.

“I feel really embraced (by the Mexican people),” she said. “People are shocked that I speak Spanish and then they really like that.”

Her connection to Latin America runs deep. Her mother grew up in Peru when Mason's grandfather worked for the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer.

“I grew up hearing Spanish all the time and there’s been that interest in Latin America and the culture in my family for a long time,” she said.

Growing up in what she called a “service oriented family” as well as spending her sophomore year of college in Spain piqued her interest in pursuing a career helping people in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. That interest turned into a passion for the impoverished people of the Southwest.

The Santa Cruz Community Foundation works with both Mexican and U.S. organizations along the border, but the passion of the people running the Mexican organizations is one of the main reasons Mason enjoys her work as much as she does.

“The need is so visible over there,” Mason said. “A lot of the organizations' (leaders)  are parents and (members of) families who have seen a need and have filled it. So there’s a lot of passion which is really inspiring.”

All of the organizations that the Santa Cruz Community Foundation works with are important to Mason, but Refugios de Dios para Niños I.A.P., a program for abandoned or abused girls and a few boys, holds a special place in Mason's heart.

“You go and see the girls in the home, and they’re really happy. You look at them and you hear what happened to them, it’s awful. It’s hard to see," Mason said.

“It’s all a product of the poverty that is so prevalent in Nogales,” she said. “They’re so poor and living in these horrible communities.”

The organization is run by nuns who provide a safe and healthy place for the kids while looking for adoptive parents.

“It’s good to see them happy and thriving and they’re just really sweet kids,” Mason said.

The stigma over the lack of safety in Nogales, on both sides of the border, is upsetting to Mason. If people stop enjoying all the things the region has to offer, then the poverty will only worsen for the people she works to help every day, she said.

When she gets frustrated, Mason stays motivated by the work of people dedicated to alleviating the suffering of the poor.

“There’s a lot of hope,” she said.

Mason plans on attending graduate school either at the University of Arizona or the University of North Carolina to study immigration and migration in hopes of changing immigration policy.

Written by Sean Hillier