Jillian Mitchell Photography | Destination Wedding Photographer | Puerto Vallarta | Mexico | New England | Worldwide

I’ve been sitting on the rest of the summer workshop photos and since school just started and we have more scholarships than ever this year I figured it was a good time to get them up on the blog. We are in need of donations for the school scholarships and along with the entreAmigos public school scholarships I am going to be heading up donations for the local Huichol girls to go to the Montessori school. I should have more information in the next week or two. Please contact me at jillfoto@gmail.com or go the the entreAmigos website: www.entreamigos.org.mx to make a donation.

This year there were more workshops than ever before, including cooking, sewing, painting, dance, circus training, ping pong, arts and crafts, and English. The big hit, however, was the long board skateboarding workshop that the guys from Treee Skateboarding put on. Nicole even got into the fun… We are now working on putting in a skate park next to the new entreAmigos Community Center. Please contact me for more information or to donate.

So lots has been happening. Mainly heat and rain, but so far the big storms haven’t rolled in yet. It was a close one last night, but didn’t lose power… yet. There are a ton of great projects in the works at entreAmigos and I had to post some of the photos I took yesterday. Please go to their website to learn more and to donate. Every little bit helps!

This is a project that Regina is heading up with the older women of San Pancho making recycled bags out of your every day plastic bags. It is absolutely amazing. I will post the final results as soon as they are finished.

And there are lots of other recycling projects going on. It seems we can never run out of material!

And of course the summer workshops!

So it’s been crazy busy down here with the holiday season upon us as well as the yearly inundation of tourists. I haven’t had any time to post and I feel like I’ve really been slacking on my site. I still have two new weddings to post, but I wanted to get in one about entreAmigos first. entreAmigos is the non-profit whose story I document and a few weeks ago we had the grand opening of our new building! It’s amazing, but we still have so far to go so please if you’d like more information or if you’d like to donate go to entreamigos.org.mx and help the children of San Pancho!

These first few are some before shots to give you a sense of how much work actually went into this project. It’s unreal what it looks like now!

here are some of the people that make entreAmigos happen…

…but of course, none of this would ever have happened if it were not for Nicole, the strongest and most determined woman I have ever met.

a big thank you to everyone involved! we did it!!

i have to include a couple of these two. they were so cute. i could have shot them all day!

One of my favorite things to do is hang out and take photos of the kids at the Montessori school in town, Escuela del Mundo. They get to do so many cool things that were never included in my elementary school years. Yoga in the morning, and once a month excursions to Zubuya. It was as though we entered another world when we arrived at the home of Monica and Marciano (they also teach at the school). They’ve named their land and home Zubuya which is a Mayan term referring to how everything is connected and essentially we’re all one. We were immediately welcomed by a large scorpion which Marciano picked up to show everyone as though it were a petal from a flower. What I love about Escuela del Mundo is how they welcome each day and eachother. They thank the earth for everything it has given them, they stretch a bit, and often, like today, they greet eachother with a salute. Because Dia de Los Muertos was just a day away one of the activities was to carve skull sculptures to put on the school altar. Besides being so much fun for the kids, Zubuya is a photographer’s dream! There were gorgeous wild flowers, butterflies, and little details everywhere I turned, which I put in the next post…

I wanted my first post on the new site to have some sort of meaning (whatever that is). So I decided to write about entreAmigos, the non-profit in San Pancho that I work for when I’m not shooting professionally. entreAmigos was created by my good friend Nicole Swedlow to provide educational and recreational opportunities to the children of the town. They are currently in the process of renovating their brand new building! I went to one of the workshops that she held with the escuela primeria in town and spoke to the kids about their suenos de la bodega (dreams of the bodega).