DREAMers Moms Tijuana – Yolanda Varona
In 2011, Yolanda Varona was unexpectedly separated from her children at the end of a trip across the border. She was deported to Mexico.
As Varona found ways to connect with her children and worked toward being with them again, she helped other deported mothers to find services and resources. Varona became the Founder and Director of DREAMers Moms in Tijuana, Mexico, as many of the women, Varona worked with were mothers of children with US citizenship or qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), otherwise known as DREAMers.
In 2019, Mari McMenamin, Dana Schuerholz and I traveled to San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico to cover border stories and listened to Varona’s story of deportation and efforts to connect with her daughter.
Producers: Mari McMenamin, Laura Florez. Special thanks to Magdaleno Rose-Avila of Building Bridges for inspiring us to pick up this story and for connecting us to the speakers.
Photos: Dana Schuerholz, Mari McMenamin
Mothers Radiation Lab
A group of mothers in Japan founded the Mothers Radiation Lab in Iwaki City of Fukushima prefecture, Japan. The women were frustrated by the lack of accessible information about nuclear contamination after the 2011 disaster at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. They set out to better understand the impact of the nuclear fallout on their children’s bodies, the foods the families ate and the contamination levels in the playgrounds at school facilities.
Producers: Yuka Honda and Yuko Kodama (Special thanks to Fumi Tagata and Kasumi Yamashita for their help with this story)
Photo: Kaori Suzuki
Alternative Pathways to Motherhood
As we reflect on Mothers this week, we look at some alternative pathways to motherhood. What do you do when you want to be a mother, but the road there is not so straightforward?
Today, we speak with mothers who have taken other routes to motherhood and a Fertility Physician who offers medical options for people who want to be a parent.
Guests:
Angela Thyer is a fertility physician with the Seattle Reproductive Medicine.
Jennifer Lehr is a mom who used in-vitro fertilization.
Listen to the interview: KBCS_M+I_20130508_Alt Pathways to Motherhood
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