Xmas Gifts for Venezuelan Migrant Kids

We are partnering with the Asociacion Deredez in Cucuta, Colombia, to fund a Christmas celebration with gifts and hot meals for migrant families and children at the Colombia-Venezuela border.

My name is Dylan Baddour . I got to know the leadership of Deredez as a journalist in Cucuta in 2017. After I left journalism for other work, I have tried to support this community organization's efforts to care for people displaced by the humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela. 

Here I am with the leadership of Deredez in 2017: 


Here are some of the children supported by the organization. The organization's facility, picture, is in the home of its founder and director, Ana Teresa Ramos Castillo. 

Here is Ana Teresa (third from left) distributing family-sized grocery bags she packed with the funds gathered through a donation campaign I organized in May 2020:


Here's exactly what we aim to fund:

$800 - Christmas gifts (art supplies) for approximately 400 children
$800 - Christmas meals and celebrations for 300 migrant families at the Venezuelan border

Any surplus funds will go to Asociacion Deredez's family food aid programs.

Deredez stands for (in Spanish) Deportees, Refugees, Displaced. Located in La Parada, Colombia, the foundation has worked since 2016 to ease the humanitarian catastrophe spilling over from neighboring Venezuela. The foundation is a certified partner of the UN High Commission on Refugees.

From director Ana Teresa Ramos Castillo: "Here we live in extreme poverty. Those migrant children won't have a Christmas tree, they won't have their Christmas celebrations. While other children here have their tree and their house, these children don't have that. We need to give them Christmas joy."

Read more on Asociacion Deredez here: https://www.facebook.com/AsoDEREDEZ/
Or here: https://twitter.com/migravenezuela/status/1178444343268577280