Paulina Montes, a businesswoman and "soccer mom" living in Miami is set on making the world a better place, one child at a time. Ten years ago, she created , along with her sister and cousin. The charity organization focuses on children and education to help solve social issues.
Montes says as she watched her son growing up, she realized many other children did not have the same opportunities he did. The quest for water, food and an education was all-consuming.
"What we wanted to do is offer the same opportunities to our friends or people that we knew from different countries who had originally helped people from their original countries, but didn't know how to do it from here," she explains. "We provided all the administrative support, the legal support, the IRS authorization to receive donations so that the people who donated through us were going to be able to deduct it from taxes."
Manos Del Sur launched its first projects in Chile and Argentina, concentrating on the importance of education in children's lives. After the success of the initial projects, they launched similar initiatives in Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The foundation is currently active in 12 countries.
"We have a manager for each country who is in charge of getting the funds and getting all the paperwork in place, so
what each country receives is proportional to the work that the manager does," explains Montes.
Their latest project focuses on Haiti.
After the devastating January 12 7.0 magnitude earthquake, Paulina Montes and her co-founders decided they wanted to do something to help.
"After the earthquake in Haiti we were really shocked when we saw the images of the children in the streets and we got involved with another organization called that was collecting water and tents and things to send to Haiti and we said 'OK let's do something!'," Montes recalls. "So we started thinking what we could do - they already have experience, they already work in Haiti - they built a school in Ti Pa Ti Pa - so we said 'OK we have somebody
who has local knowledge and who we can trust and we can work with them on a project in Haiti'."
Initially, Manos del Sur wanted to send tents to painted by children but that idea was re-worked into something much more elaborate.
"We wanted to send happy tents, we thought that everything would be so destroyed and dusty and dry and we thought that the children needed a little bit of happiness in their lives and color and joy," Montes says. "So a project that started with a couple of artists going to work with children developed into 10 tents painted by famous artists that we are going to do like a community center or a school that we are going to install in Haiti."
The 10 painted tents will be placed on the property of , a charity organization founded and directed by Robert "Bobby" Duval. It is a free sports program for underprivileged children living near the Cite Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince.
"It is a sports camp and educational center for young people," Duval explains, "so they can have a shot at a better life. Imagine what it has meant to kids... we've been doing this for 15 years now. So we invite everyone to come visit the center, it's near the airport. We're very open and as soon as you get here, you'll see what I mean."
After the earthquake, thousands of survivors flocked to Duval's property and have been living there ever since. He says initially there were 1,200 people living on his property. After the earthquake the number rose to 3,000.
Paulina Montes contacted Duval when her sons, who adore soccer, came up with the idea of sending soccer balls to the children of Haiti. She asked her friend, journalist Kathy Claridge advice on what charity organization inside Haiti would like to receive the balls. Claridge suggested Bobby Duval. After a few phone calls Montes was able to speak to Duval and the tent idea was born.
Each of the 10 tents Manos Del Sur plans to place at l'Athletique d'Haiti will represent a theme that is related to the country's past, present or future. The main objective is to teach the person looking at the tent something new about the country.
"When we started Manos Del Sur our objective was to do education. We found the harsh reality that sometimes education was not obtainable because the kids were not fed," Montes explains. "They didn't have vaccines or medicines. So we started to do a little of everything - we started first feeding the kids. Here, we can go directly to education, that we think is the only thing that will solve Haiti's problems."