MY STORY:

After wiping out on my motor cycle in June of 2018 and subsequently having to sell Winter Reporting due to my injuries I find myself living close to our southern borderlands.

It didn't take me long to discover many of the sad stories about asylum seeking families at our southern borders are true.

In October of 2019 I walked across the Santa Fe Bridge which connects El Paso, Texas to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and decided then and there the next phase of my life was going to be humanitarian aid at the border.

The first thing I noticed when I got to Juarez was families were sleeping on the street with little to protect them from the cold sidewalk. So I began distributing camping pads out on the street. I realized I needed to create a nonprofit to raise money for more pads and whatever else came up.

And so I've created Dormir es Poder (To sleep is to be enabled) or (Sleep is Power).

There in Juarez I met a badass priest who spent her days on the Juarez streets ministering to the asylum seeking families. She soon knew I was in it for the long haul and asked me if I could come up with a way to show cartoons in Spanish out on the street to the children of the asylum seekers.

A consultation call with B&H in New York, a big back pack to carry projector, speakers and popcorn and within a few days we were having movie night on the street one to two times a week.

Eventually we lost our spot on the street and found a shelter deep into Juarez where we could continue to make life a little more normal, a little more fun for the kids.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 the shelter I worked in has now become a quarantine station for asylum seekers. Already resources were stretched. Now there's even more need and less to be had. Bleach is scarce. Beans are scarce. We already had challenges hauling fresh drinking water into the shelter and now fresh water is scarce. Due to the pandemic, it has become difficult for me to travel to the shelter in Juarez. For now I will not hear the shouts of Señor Pelicula as I show up to the shelter. I can't play soccer with my little buddies. I can't give piggy back rides.

I can however help by getting funds to my contacts in Juarez.

So umpires, arbitrators, clients, childhood friends, uncles, cousins and all the eccentrics I've met along the way, please donate to this cause.

I've received my tax exempt status from the IRS in March of this year. The good news from the IRS came just in time because the need right now is so great.

I will keep you all updated as things progress in my little slice of the helping world.

Thank you for taking the time here.

Douglas Winter
Dormir es Poder
doug@dormirespoder.org
(Trusted Service since 2019)