Letter From Estela

Dear Students,
Your Symbolic Monarchs have arrived in Mexico and into the hands of the children who live near the monarch sanctuaries. My annual visits to deliver your Ambassador Butterflies are now underway. Each time I arrive at a school and it is announced to children that butterflies from the US and Canada have arrived they shout of joy and gather together to receive their butterflies.

Our children are delighted to receive letters and the little presents enclosed. They love to try to read sentences in English, dreaming that some day they will speak English! According to government reforms in education in México, English will be a mandatory subject in the mid-term future.  Presently, no public school in Mexico teaches English as a subject.

My visits always begin with a brief message of conservation on the habitat of monarch butterflies. The monarch’s winter sanctuaries are in the mountain forests no more than a few kilometers from these classrooms! At some schools we can see the forests right from the school playground -- or even monarchs flying by! These children are the future owners of the land that surrounds the sanctuaries, so teachers nowadays consider Journey North a very important educational program. 

Every year, every season, Journey North gets to new generations of children who, for the first time, hear about monarchs’ life cycle. They are always astonished to realize that our local mountains have the biggest sanctuaries in the world. They brim with pride that monarchs come from so far away to overwinter in our forests!

After receiving your butterflies and letters, the children respond enthusiastically, feeling thrilled at the idea of exchanging with students from the regions in the US and Canada where the monarchs come from. In their letters they tell about themselves, and about the ways they can contribute to preserving the monarch’s Oyamel forests.

I am so happy to be your messenger to visit these lovely children in my hometown and surrounding communities! 
Your friend,
Estela Romero
Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico