Home Messages Members Forum Blog worldofchildren.org Help
  • David
  • "I am fortunate that I have found my passion in life which is working with the 'world's most distitute' as Mother Theresa described the scavengers of the Tijuana dump on her visit many years ago. My work is all about the children."
  • i am offline
David's Latest Photos
About David:
More About MeIn 1980, David Lynch, a public school teacher from New York, planned to spend a month as a volunteer serving the 35 families whose means of survival was scavenging at the municipal garbage dump in Tijuana, Mexico. After returning for two more summers, Lynch, struck with the conviction that education could lift the children there out of poverty, decided to stay and has been educating children there for 26 years. Leaving his tenured teaching position behind, Lynch set up a tarp near where the children worked with their parents at the dumpsite. Here he offered an English class which eventually became a complete education system, called Responsibility, Inc., serving 400 children per year. As financial support for buildings and teachers became available, Responsibility grew to provide classes for children ages 3 to 7 and a computer lab and art school for all the children living around the city dump. Lynch also set up a program whereby students from all over the United States have the opportunity to help the less fortunate. This is often an integral part of the high school and college experience for students to do social service hours or get classroom teaching experience for those majoring in child development or education. Annually 2500 US students devote their time in some way to help the poorest of the poor. Despite cynicism from the general public and no financial assistance from the government to support the education of the preschool /kindergarten children in this poverty stricken area of Tijuana, Lynch has worked to bring his students' learning capacity to a step above that of the surrounding government funded schools. From inception in 1992, Lynch's program has placed a majority of its kindergarten graduates a full year ahead on the entrance exam provided by the Mexican public school system, Lynch's efforts have served to significantly better the lives of thousands of Mexican students, involve the lives of thousands of American students, and inspire the lives of countless others. In 2003 a musical play was created documenting Lynch's life service, followed by a children's book tentatively called Armando and the Blue Tarp School coming in 2007. For more information, please visit www.responsibilityonline.org.
The Tijuana Project

tijuanaproject.org


'The Tijuana Project is a documentary that shows hope'
RESPONSIBILITY

responsibility.org   

                   

"As Responsibility programs gradually expanded, support increased allowing the building of schools and most importantly the addition of teachers. Today, the non-profit organization provides a variety of educational programs, utilizing the commitment of a professional staff, and volunteers."

"Armando and the Blue Tarp School" by Edith Hope Fine and Judith Pinkerton Josephson


http://bluetarpschool.com/

KIRKUS REVIEWS 'This affecting tale--of a plein-air schoolroom in a deeply impoverished neighborhood populated by pepenadores (trash pickers)--springs from the real deal. Fine and Josephson have taken the story of David Lynch, who first went to Mexico in 1980 to teach children living in the Tijuana city dump, and fashioned it into a picture book. Fictional, yes, but only marginally so. Their story pivots around Armando, who scours the dump with his father all day long for anything of worth, and his thirst to join the classroom: a blue tarp on the bare ground. Though Armando's income is vital to the family, his parents come to understand that only an education will allow him to eclipse pepenadore life. The simplicity of the story is what lets it run deep, its bite of realism; no sermons are being delivered here, just a door thrown open to life under reduced circumstances (though Sosa's artwork, with its look of leaded glass, conveys a benevolent quality to the proceedings). Without patronizing, Señor David defines the essence of humanitarianism, while the pepenadores, ever searching for beauty in the beast, find gold--and prize it. '