By Susan Riemer

For The Beachcomber

Islander Jill Beytebiere has traveled to the United States-Mexico border several times to assist immigrants in shelters and homeless people on the streets, including people fleeing Central America and deportees from this country. She has now launched a shoe drive and hopes that islanders will donate shoes in good condition for children and adults there.

Beytebiere returned from a four-day trip to Tijuana early this month, plans to go back in December and will send supplies in November. Islanders with shoes they would like to donate — in good condition and of any size — may drop them off at Calvary Full Gospel Church. Beytebiere is also willing to pick up larger donations personally.

“People started giving us shoes before we left, some just from out in left field without even knowing I was starting a shoe drive,” she said in a recent email. “I brought some down this trip and people were absolutely overjoyed to have them. Everyone seemed to need shoes down there, and people were all smiles to get a new pair.”

Beytebiere, who works as a caretaker for Visiting Angels, launched Inspiration 2 Go, a registered nonprofit, last spring in order to help the deportees and immigrants in Tijuana, including at the Espacio Migrante and Juventud 2000 facilities. It was there where she said families were housed in tents lined up in a warehouse or given bunk beds in a narrow, dimly lit hallway.

Beytebiere has financed much of the work herself, contributing about $2,000 per month, which covers plane tickets, hotel, materials for job projects for people in the shelters and homes she visits, as well as food she and traveling companions — often family members — hand out to hungry people on the street. She plans to do more fundraising, she said, including through churches, and noted she must bring in at least $500 per month in donations to continue as a traditional nonprofit. She stressed that all donations will support direct assistance in Tijuana.

Beytebiere, who previously went on two service trips to Haiti, said she is drawn to helping people at the border and is passionate about the cause.

“I help because I want to do the most good possible with the life I have been given, both here in the U.S. and in other countries, where, unfortunately, the need is even greater,” she said.

Through her nonprofit, she supplies people in the shelters she visits with projects, such as ironing messages on T-shirts and making baby quilts, aprons and other items that she plans to sell to keep funding the work. In turn, she says, she pays them between $10 and $20 for an hour’s work, much higher than normal wages of $2 per hour. She now has hundreds of T-shirts, she said, which are available for sale on her website, inspiration2go.org. Additionally, she and others who accompany her — often family members — give the people they encounter backpacks filled with practical items, such as food, school supplies and small toys for the children and “Teach Yourself to Read” books she wrote in Spanish for the many children who are not in school.

Ideally, she said, she would like to create and support more housing for immigrants coming into town and has looked at a building that she believes would require about $1,000 each month to house 30 to 50 people.

In the coming months, though, she is focused on the shoe drive and improving her website to facilitate sales and support more projects through her nonprofit efforts.

Donate:

Shoes, as well as small toys and school supplies, are all welcome. Drop shoes off at the bin outside the doors of Calvary Full Gospel Church at 13107 SW 220th St. Or, for larger donations, contact Beytebiere at jillbeytebiere@gmail.com.