A Pebble in the Pond Program is a unique, revolutionary, no cost, and multi-skill based training program that does not require any government assistance. All of the work in this program comes from those motivated people within the community. A group of 4-6 motivated mothers are empowered and become the central catalyst for improvement in each extremely poor community. The Program involves training this group of 4-6 mothers in 12 Simple Survival Skills, 12 Educational Shortcut Skills, and 12 Income-Producing Skills. The program is taught to both the mothers and children through either a portable DVD player, photographs, or a special animated comic book filled with pictures and simple diagrams that describe the skills.
My work with impoverished and disabled children started thirty-four years ago when my youngest son was born with a severe neurological disability.
Over the last 30 years, I have operated, taught, and worked with disabled and impoverished children in over 80 countries.
Due to this need, over the last 4 years, I have been working with several severely impoverished Mexican Shanty town slums in Acapulco at Cumbers de Llano Largo, The Frontera community outside of Acapulco, and in Mexico City.
These areas have several thousand severely impoverished children. In Mexico City, the poorest of the poor children are living in squalor in the largest trash dump in the world. In this trash dump, the children have no shoes, have gunk crusted on their feet and the smell is overwhelming. In 2009, the trash dumps had 3 feet (1m) of water during a flood.
The average hut in a Shanty Town Slum has a mother and 3 children living in just one room. It is the size of an average American closet. It is windowless, run-down, leaking, and made from cardboard, pieces of wood, and plastic. They live on a dirt floor, usually with no beds, and the holes in the hut result in mosquitoes, insects, and scorpions.
The children have no regular source of food, clean running water, or electricity. There are no bathrooms or toilets. When available, the children usually eat pieces of tortillas and beans cooked over an open wood fire. Hi-grade protein is either scant or non-existent. The smoke causes bronchitis and asthma in young children and the children have no shoes, wear dirty clothes, and may have to sleep on the dirt floor.
During the rains, the floor is muddy and everything in the hut is wet.
Even when the family has a husband or older son working, there is barely enough money to buy food, clean water, or other basic essentials.
The people live this way because their parents and grandparents lived this way. They do not know any different way, so they continue to live this way generation after generation.
