By John Pint

Members of six families whose children attend the American School in Guadalajara, Mexico, gathered together recently to hike along a 2.2 kilometer Nature Trail laid out by rangers in the Primavera Forest, located just west of the city. All members of the group were carrying bombs, but not the sort that cause destruction.

Just the opposite. “These are called seed bombs,” explained trip organizer Stefanie McGrath, handing me a hard brown ball about an inch and a half (4 cm) wide. “They're made of clay mixed with the seeds of the milkweed plant,” continued McGrath, “on whose leaves the Monarch butterfly lays its eggs. Unfortunately, the numbers of Monarchs are in serious decline because of deforestation, agricultural spraying, urbanization, fires and climate change. So we've come to toss our seed bombs in an area where milkweed plants have a chance of growing and someday providing food for las monarcas.”

McGrath went on to explain that this was a hands-on project of seven local families for promoting pollinator plants for bees, butterflies, bats and hummingbirds. “It's the first time we do this,” she said, “so we had to learn a lot of things about how to make the bombs correctly.”

They were able to get the seeds from a government-certified resource and they obtained local, natural powdered clay from potters in Tlaquepaque, which is famous for its arts and crafts. The families then gathered together several weeks ago to make the bombs well ahead of the start of the rainy season.

I asked who came up with the idea of this project and learned it was Stefanie's daughters, Carlie and Olivia. Olivia told me, “We were looking for a project that would help the environment and I thought of the milkweed plants we have growing at our house and how much we enjoy watching the caterpillars turn into butterflies.”

As we began our hike along the edge of a steep drop overlooking the forest, I heard someone in the group mention that seed bombing was their 14th project.

“Well, tell me a little about the other 13,” I said.

A shy little girl named Kiran spoke up immediately: “One of them was a waterless car wash project. We used a special soap that doesn't need water.” I learned that this project took place a year and a half ago when the kids washed cars using a special technique employed by Ecosquad Carwash, a small business in Guadalajara where you can indeed get your car washed with a harmless, biodegradable product that uses almost no water.

A boy named Rodrigo added a comment: “With the money we got from the car wash, we hired some plumbers, and then we went from house to house in Zapopan asking people if they had leaky faucets or water pipes... and the plumbers fixed them. It was a project to save water!”

In short order the rest of the children started telling me about other projects this group had done. They participated in a soup kitchen and cooked meals for kids whose parents work in the street. They cleaned trash out of rivers in Colomos Park. They did a project to get street dogs adopted. They put on a show in a hospital which performs operations on children with cleft palates. They held a concert for the benefit of disabled kids in an orphanage. And their very first project, I learned from a boy named Arun, had occurred about four years ago when they raised money and sent it to India to fix two water pumps and build a new one in communities that had no water.

I was astounded. “You've done fourteen projects like these?” I said. “How did it all begin? Who started the first project?

“Arun,” they all said.

I asked Arun what had inspired him and discovered I should have asked who.

“It was Craig Kielburger who inspired me,” said Arun. “He gave a presentation in Guadalajara at the end of 2010. After listening to him, I talked to my mom and she called friends and we started with maybe four families and we named the group, 'Help the Children, Please!' Now we've done fourteen projects and we are growing.”

Little by little I learned that Craig Kielburger is a Canadian who, at the age of twelve, had been profoundly impacted by a news story about a boy in India who had been sold into slavery at the age of four and had been chained to a carpet-weaving loom for six years... and had been murdered—at the age of twelve—when all of this came to light. Craig and eleven other teens organized themselves as The “Twelve-Twelve-year-Olds” and started a movement called Free the Children, which grew and grew and now mobilizes 2.3 million young people around the world. Kids helping kids have managed to get over 650 schools built and have provided over a million people with clean water, health care and sanitation.

Our walk eventually took us into a cool, damp arroyo where there was moss on the rocks and ferns everywhere. “This is the perfect place for milkweed,” announced biologist Jesús Lepe. “Bombs away!”

The clay balls flying through the air somehow seemed symbolic to me. These children and these families were sewing seeds of another sort with every new project of theirs. I have to admit it, meeting them has given me a new perspective. I think there's actually hope for this old planet, after all!