Playa del Carmen NOW

okay and welcome to the Playa Del Carmen Now podcast welcome welcome to the wild podcast today's episode is kids in Playa del Carmen and we have somebody here today that does exactly that and that is Dale Collins Gail Collins from KK is but I will come welcome Gail my name is Ken Schmidt Castillo of condo hotels Playa Del Carmen in my co-host mr. Xavier resend this and where do we resend his waist everywhere all the way to everywhere so good morning and then
before Gail before we start talking about kids in Playa del Carmen and and your amazing journey so far
you've lived in Playa del Carmen now how long 17 years 17 years she got me beat she's got me B&N why did you move to Playa de Carmen because I'm from Minnesota and it's cold 9 months a year there so I decided when I retired I was never going to live another day in cold weather... What about the hot weather now is I'm used to it it doesn't bother me as much as it used to watch it so she's she's accustomed to it cuz it was Paradise we live in paradise and we get the pleasure of living here and end in as how he was talking to her earlier I says you know we always complain about Playa and then a minute we sit down and start remembering all the great things why we're here we're like hey we live in Paradise
okay so couple questions Gail before we get started about kids so when your friends or family or somebody comes in to Playa del Carmen to visit you what do you do with them how did what do you do to entertain them
well we go to a lot of beaches that's that's mostly why people come here they they want to go to the beach and I always take him to my favorite restaurant which is ilonggo ilonggo okay I'll wait a second. Place it is because it is a quintessential Mexican restaurant experience here in Playa and I've never been there and again it's like
where am I you know what I mean anything I learn all these again here we go episode 17 in the new restaurant you know what it's it's on the other side of the highway so it's a place that is not well-known let's say for Mary to report for local people is well in a Define on the place and actually did people leave this place they are involved with the local community day like to support kids to support the your neighborhood they have the local Barrio culturally that is nothing like the local culture of neighborhood you have to go I will take you there okay Robin going to some of the restaurants on the other side of town There's a couple of them that I you know I know that I absolutely love as long as they are a good food you are there I'm there I am there for sure
and it's not just the food that attracts me they're going to do is also he helps the community kind of like Kiss does and I introduced him to a rotary club and our Rotary Club sponsors meals for his students that he has there and so it's just become this big circle of Love get her on the on the show so Michelle is is the main representative of this Seaside Rotary Club that's who she speaking up so this is Gail Collins she runs and charity organization called KK is Sarkis the way she says it and then k k a is keeping kids in school
God that think they're saying it is an amazing job I think I've been assisting you along the way you have been a great supporter of ours since the first time we ever had a fundraiser. I didn't know what did the first year and I'm glad to hear that I'm amazing to hear that and yes I've been always been a big supporter I always want the best for this community are always looking out always like to eat local food I always like to buy local stuff and specially my wife and I we always going to all the local events and of course we want to support the kick it is thank you
that's amazing
Tokyo tell us a little bit about kks and what are you do on a regular basis and
Well on a regular basis we have to our main mission is to educate as many students as we can to get them to graduate from high school and go to the university if they qualify so this year we had 84 high school students on scholarship and 25 University students and scholarship it's a full-ride we educate the whole person not just pay for the credits wow that's amazing that is just amazing and I
oh it's a tella somewhere somewhere in this house is great information I speak to donors is that if you really want to change a person's life you have to go back to the beginning and give them the education without an education there is nothing they can do to change their life and it's not just true here it's everywhere and when kids grow up in generation after generation of poverty the family can't provide the experiences for them that will help them survive so somebody has to step in and show him how it can be done
and we get way more requests from students for help then we have money for but we every year we grow and this coming year were looking at even more students in school already where we've already into the application process for University students and we also do school supplies and we do school supplies it sounds like an insignificant kind of thing to do but it allows us entry into kids at a young age so that they understand that staying in school is really the thing to do that
when you come to Playa del Carmen the very minimal thing you can do and it's an amazing thing is bring a backpack with pencils and paper and that kind of stuff I think is what we used to do and I got away from it and I'm glad you're here to remind me and it is we had guess we used to collect the backpacks in the paper in the pencils in the pens and all the stuff for the meaning of the Artistry of the things that are not very expensive at all and we can pass them on to Gail and her group in in it's a great segue into getting involved
and give me a minute I forgot my thought I don't want to but I want to know something I thought when you said kid's I felt like small kids but you are mentioning high school and University so how does it go somewhere we start at we choose different schools in different neighborhoods we deal with the lowest rungs of children and Society the ones that drop out of school every year during primary school those those are the kids that we want to keep in school
and so we go to schools in the poorest neighborhoods and we give every kid in school a whole bag of school supplies and we also have our University students come with us and talk to the kids because we don't know Spanish and they'll for millier really give a little spill a little 5 minutes be able to the kids that we're not just doing this because we're nice people we're doing this because we want you to stay in school for you to be a better person and if you don't we talk to second that are your kids who are very astute about where their place is in society and we tell them if you don't like the way you're living if you don't if you want to be somebody different you would approve your would have to be the change the change starts with you and
start by staying in school
and so that's why we do school supplies it's an easy way to get access to kids the message we send two kids is the only positive message they get about education
and I'm right it's not just a hand out and then that could be confusing right at times but see what happens is the negative messages come within the family within society that it's more important for you to get a job at 8:10 then it is for you to go to school because we need the money and it all starts with the wages that people earn here are Solo Brooke that it's difficult for a family of four to live on one low-wage job everybody in the family needs to pitch in but you don't they don't understand that by telling your kid it's great you're making 4 000 pesos a month this is awesome this really helps the family and if you drop out of school you can make 4 000 pesos every month but you're going to make 4 000 pesos a month for the rest of your life if you stay in school you can make much more than
so that's how cool our goal is really to actually we talked a lot about improving the workforce in Playa del Carmen that sounds kind of altruistic but it is the fact that we want educated people to work for us and educated help is very difficult to find I know and I'm kind of a struggle I mean and if they could educate themselves on being good at certain things cuz there's there's many many types of jobs in this town that their shortages up even good in a good jobs let me really good jobs carpenter jobs in and then finishing jobs and stuff like that and you know that that have a good wages and they just if they educate themselves or or have the desire to learn I guess it's
the other big thing is it is the desire to learn instead of the peer pressure I didn't you know you just kind of reminded me that it's amazing that the thought of a of the parents is David send the kids out to go to work at 10 years old really is amazing is that
I mean I didn't realize it was that I mean I knew when they got to be teenagers they you know they kind of expected them to work but I didn't realize even as young as ten years old you're reaching out to these families to get them get their kids educated so they can make a change and they leave in this concept like normalizing this thing right like they think that is there that way to do it but they need people like you I can imagine like that your team to tell them another kind of story right and I think we have such an immigrant Community here and I mean that or people from all over Mexico have come here to live because they thought there were jobs here but they may not be skilled enough for the jobs we need and so they end up with very low wage jobs here but that was what they were used to back home so it's it's what they know what they look scary and
and so people say well it was good enough for me and I can support my family so it's good enough for you but it's not in the economy we live in jobs have changed and even the lowest jobs need some kind of technology so it's if we want an educated Workforce we have to make sure that it happens it doesn't happen automatically that's amazing I would need to create that So Cal how many people work with you
I have two full-time employees only but Kelly called well and I run the organization we are volunteers and but we have about six part-time people like we have a web person and a social media person and a marketing person in a bookkeeper a lot of part-time jobs that work for us but otherwise it's just the core four people four of us that do it based on those numbers if there's four of you and you've now you were talking about 85 students and 25 students are mean you got over a hundred for you so you're right like a four-to-one ratio away mean I mean a 25 to 1 ratio and because I don't speak Spanish it's even worse than that for the people that I just want you to know that all 100 earlier was like she wanted to be volunteering
the kids situation so when were when we're out she's she's in she's really good English conversation club and we go into the school's two or three times a week two different high schools and all we do is sit and talk to kids in English most of them have some English because they've had classes in high school but none of their teachers are native English speakers so we really need good English-speaking people to just talk to kids and teach them the correct way to pronounce the word but there you go all 100 we got all 100 new job okay
I know you can do the next podcast there you go that's like a plan that sounds like a plan and for how long you been doing this since our 10th year so it fits we had graduation last Saturday and we graduated 24 high school kids in for University students it starts like how how was the wedding beginning from these are used to have a group of friends here who they had an organization called Christmas dreams and it was all volunteer and we would get money at Christmas time from people that were visiting Playa and we would buy a Christmas toys for kids and deliver them to some of the outlying neighborhoods and one at one of our meetings a woman came and she said she had heard about us and she was a teacher at a public school she did not want us
give her kids those plastic toys she wanted them to have school supplies or is it was like somebody just pierced my heart when she said I want my kids to have school supplies and I'm thinking the kids want school supplies and she said they would take school supplies any day over a plastic toy she said you have no idea I have a class of 37 second graders and for kids show up with school supplies for the year she is I have no money I get paid very little to school has no money and so
aisle 37 kids are begging and borrowing school supplies from everybody and she's at I'm always asking people if you have extra stuff clean out your desk bring it to me because we can always use it and so we changed in Midstream what we were doing and we also told people if you're coming from the US bring a suitcase full of school supplies and people were kind of like and we said and people did we Heather Anderson was helping us with this and she would get people dropping off suitcases full of school supplies for us and so we were able to go to that teacher school and not only did we have enough school supplies for every child in her class we had him for the whole school wow that's just amazing it sounds easy but it's a process and we were using my garage to
years so now this this coming year we will hand out a little more than two thousand bags of school supplies and we target like I said we target certain neighborhoods and one of our University application says here one of the students wrote that she remembered getting a bag of school supplies when she was in third grade from the kiss project in TJ was tears when the bucket is usually like more like let's say I don't know about this kind of talk it's going to my heart rate stuff I'm doing in
and Gales a perfect person for all this I mean that she put this all together all the knowledge for working in the US yes here it is totally different the schools are run differently the management is different the language is different and everything about it is different and the fact that not all the kids can go to school cuz there ain't even a schools for the kids to go to is different so I had an idea that I could find out the information I could we could work at it and we have we've done this now for 10 years but I have to say we've learned every step of the way the hard way again another great story in the Playa Del Carmen Now podcast and and it's just amazing
it's just amazing in in and I want you to know today Gail
I want to I want to do my part again I got two things I'm going to do with it you today cuz of that every show I I do some kind of promotion for condo hotels and Inns in this one number one first condo hotels is writing you a check today so we have a nice have a nice check for you today for coming here and being on the show and we are all going to contribute some funds to the cake is program
perfect that is going to be
money in the bank the second thing we're going to do is there some other thing there's another thing this is this is a big one in all 100 paying attention because I'm she's got to make sure to communicate this correctly to the reservations department
so use the hashtag
KK is in our reservation system
and not only is the guest going to get an additional 10%. Not just a 10% and it digital 10% to what what the current promotion is and PK is is going to get 10% Commission on that reservation so we we really please please if you're coming to Playa del Carmen and you're staying in any of the condo hotels Playa Del Carmen properties use the hashtag KK is it will be good year-round including the holidays I am including this in the holidays
oh my God I'm going to get crazy with this yes you're going to get a 10% off and kick it is will be the agent registered on the reservation to get a 10% Commission
nice and then again I'm going to ask you if you are coming the condo hotel if you are coming please like she said bring a suitcase bring a suitcase of kale tell them what the bring well if you are used to buying school supplies for your own kids you're going to buy the same kind of school supplies for these kids everybody uses his pens pencils please don't bring notebooks they use different notebooks here than what they're used to in the u.s.a. like a little square they don't have those in the US would you use lines night online so so bye bye things that are
a easy to carry here and lightweight you do not want to bring a suitcase full of erasers erasers weigh the most of anyting Aleve it or not so glue sticks and markers and color and they don't use as many markers here is we doing the US's colored pencils cuz markers can dry out very easily they get moldy they're they're not they're consumed much much faster than colored pencils scissors for little kids I don't know off the top of my head pencil sharpeners you know all that kind of stuff that you buy for your own kids dry erase markers because we have each of the classrooms has a dry erase board in it well to bring from the space okay if you put it in a backpack and somebody just carries the backpack on your school supplies but we tell people and we can put this up on your thigh
also if they think they want to bring a whole suitcase will give you a letter to get you through customs cuz Customs wants to know what therefore they don't want you reselling school supplies here in Mexico so we tell them it's a donation to kiss we give them rrfc number all of the information that they need and then Customs just let you right through okay that's quite important so you know when she said the RFC number it's just a tax ID is a company Tax ID number here in Mexico which identifies the company in that way it'll go more fluid in in like you said like she said just be super aware that you're going through customs and if you have 3000 pencils they're going to ask you why you have them and it's good to have this information 3000
dollar store in the states and buy a package of pencils for practically $200 and you know if you fly on Southwest they have free luggage so you could easily bring an extra piece of luggage and here from Canada WestJet gives you one free piece of luggage if you're doing it for humanitarian reasons and we'll give you the letter to get you through to do that basically we're making it so there's no excuse if you want to help I mean these are Kids R Kids you want kids to be smart you want you want our next Generation to be better
prepared he wants to bring them then their best we want every child to reach their potential where we need to send them when you have a website they have a website and on our website at tells you where you can bring the school supplies or you can just send us an email at info at kiss project.org and we will make arrangements to come to your hotel and pick him up when you say kiss project is it spelled correctly k i s s project. I keep thinking of keeping kids in school so I asked. Kiss project one word. Org. Art I think I and then your website is the same right
there you go and then of course you have Facebook and social media you got stuff on Instagram check it out so I'm just curious about if people want to buy things in here in Mexico that's also another easy things to do right absolutely Walmart will love you okay there we go. There's a Walmart right here in Playa del Carmen yes steps away actually we up we aren't we have now too and we are building it up there at 1. Hope you're getting a new chedraui so yes yes
okay and I'm seeing that with the website. It looks amazing okay well Dale thank you so much for coming today I
I love what you're doing I really truly love what you're doing I supported any possible way I can we get you this check will get you some reservations get you some commission money and hopefully we've educated everybody out there on how you can help and we look forward to seeing you we look forward to seeing Gale in the future and mistress ended yeah thank you thank you for doing this once and thank you for following so much time on days because 10 years doing this with all the things that you are sharing I can imagine the rest being a struggling time sometimes but you mean you mean the Playa Del Carmen challenges sausage in La here we go with the sad conversations you don't understand English to worry about them walking in the door to episodes
well thank you guys for inviting me I I've enjoyed this okay very good thank you and
are you up are you