Christian (left) and Rodrigo are two brothers who have lived at the Home for Children orphanage in Morelia for the past 7 years.
Rodrigo usually runs into NOE smiling and asks for help with his homework. He also likes to play with Legos.
Christian is quieter than his younger brother. He stops by the office each day after class and likes to just talk about how things are going. He would like to study Marine Biology.
They are two of the 15 kids from the Home for Children orphanage who are attending our newest center, NOE Vida West.
Angel has found a haven in NOE, a place where he is accepted. Born with a severe speech handicap, then orphaned, Angel has always felt like he didn’t belong. At NOE, he learns, plays, forms part of the worship team where he plays the guitar, and pitches in to help out wherever needed. He has even started dreaming of one day being able to study to be a mechanic.
Angel is one of the ways the NOE Center “pays forward” the support we receive. There are 18 kids from Angel’s orphanage who are on scholarship at NOE. Our youth group also hands out food and prays with parents at a local children’s hospital each month. There is no sense of entitlement at NOE, rather an attitude of wanting to give back because of what has been received.
Yazmin was one of the first students to register when NOE León opened in October of 2015. She lives with her aunt who is the housekeeper at a home nearby. With scholarship help, her aunt was able to register Yazmin in English, computers, and homework help classes at NOE. Yazmin claims that NOE has helped her get better grades in school and she likes the values that are taught there. She is a shy girl and her dream is to be a professional hairstylist.
Erick’s older sister got involved in NOE many years ago, but not Erick. He disliked English and had no desire to go to school in the afternoons. Later on, he was doing so poorly in high school that he had to sit out a year, (which is common in Mexico). His parents gave him some options of how he could spend his time during the year off, one of which was to study English at NOE.
If you met him today, dressed all in white as required of students studying medicine, you would have a difficult time believing the previous paragraph. “I started to like English from the very first day I was at NOE,” he said recently. “The way they taught made me start to like learning.” Seeing he could learn English gave Erick the confidence he needed in high school where he started to excel. After graduating, he was accepted to medical school. Erick was a member of the 2016 NOE Summer Exchange program.
Bridget’s father doesn’t believe that women have any need to study. Her mom, however, thinks differently, and when NOE Loma Libre opened right down the street from their home three years ago, she immediately enrolled Bridget and her older sister. When asked how her classes at the public school are, Bridget replies that she doesn’t learn anything there, that the place she learns is NOE, where the teachers treat her with patience and love. That explains why she always shows up for classes with a smile on her face.
NOE students sat down for some interviews in our White Curtain Series:
CLICK HERE to watch the videos24 years of NOE alumni equals a lot of success stories. Catch up with the Dream Team alumni here:
CLICK HERE to read their stories