Pastor-led shelters bring schooling options to migrant kids

By GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO
Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Child migrants often miss months or even years of schooling on their turbulent journeys. That hurts their chances of escaping poverty and achieving the safer futures their parents seek. In Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling city on the U.S.-Mexican border where thousands are waiting to cross, pastor-led shelters are working to provide them an education, however transitory. At one, teachers come most afternoons to hold classes. At another, kids are bused to an alternative campus where they learn everything from punctuation to basic geometry to drawing. Perhaps most important, the children get to spend time concentrating on school and not on the traumas that haunt them.