Why are we going to help Children with cancer in Mexico again?
by Fernando Román

Like all Mexican people, watching the disaster that hurricane Wilma has done in Mexico, in the state of Quintana Roo, make us feel sad, when we knew the situation that our brothers are living right now, my wife and me were thinking about that, because at the moment we didn't know what to do, how to participate in a way to help this Mexican state. At the same period of time, we had a family issue that has shocked us strongly, on October 19th of the current year, my Mother passed away due to a lately detected cancer, just two days before her 63 birthday anniversary, and a month before that my second son, Leonardo was born. Since then my Mother had been in hospital, after did all that humanly can be done, the doctors suggested me to take her to her house, she was there only one day.

As you can imagine, many things have been around my head during October, and my wife, Rocío Agüero Sensei and me, had doubts about, to whom we can aim the help that our last seminar of 2005 could bring, a help that is usually generated by AHAN trough seminars around the world.

With all this I wrote to AHAN international, asking the opinion of Emily Busch and Homma Kancho of Nippon Kan. They politely suggested me that the choice must be completely made by us in Mexico, and that they only could tell me what they had thought and done with hurricane Katrina in the United States of America. They told me that when situations like these happen, the entire world focused their attention to help the victims of those disasters, and even with all the difficulties that they live, the support finally arrive. In many situations, the help that other people need and actually are dependent of such help, to continue with their lives and to heal, are deviated. This lack of support enormously affects the developing of projects of humanitarian organizations. Also, the support that can be given in this events, compared with the support that big organizations can give, is really small, but this small support make a big difference with the organizations that are usually supported to continue with their humanitarian projects. They also told me that in our country could be different with hurricane Wilma, but at the end, it must be us who got to make the choice.

With all this, my wife and me decided that the support of this last seminar of 2005, will be aimed to the children with cancer in Mexico, so we will continue in the support that since 2003 we have been giving to the institution "Casa de la amistad para niños con Cancer". This is a serious institution with high prestige that has reached many goals in its Job. Furthermore, the situation that I have already told you, that my mother passed away due to cancer, I though in the needy families, in my experience of grew up in a family, as there are many around the world, with only a mother and no father, make me ask my wife Rocío that this support will be made like a constant program, and while our possibilities allow us, with no interruption, I mean year after year. I told her that it would be a way to did something for the people affected with this disease, and better if they were children, because they could be saved or would had a better life, if the disease were detected early.

I ask to all the Aikido practitioners in Mexico, and from other countries if it is possible, to assist to this seminar; don't think if this seminar is organized by this or another dojo, for few days liberate from prejudices and allow yourselves to help. As you can guess this seminar will have a strong significance to me, stronger than other occasions, thank you very much in advance for your participation, support and contribution. Between this reasons, it is why I ask Homma Kancho, begin this seminar sharing the instruction of Aikido, I need to give my self to the participants, deliver all that I can and in the way that I know, so I can heal in a way my heart.