Readers' response to the book

Many people were inspired to try to change some of the conditions described in Enrique's Journey. Here are a few things readers did:

At La Jolla Country Day School in San Diego, students launched a campaign to raise money for Guatemalan women. They joined with non-profit Project Concern to raise money to provide micro-loans to women in Guatemala to help create jobs so those women could stay in their home country with their children.

The non-profit Hispanics in Philanthropy launched a year-long campaign to raise awareness in the philanthropic community about migrant children who come to the U.S. alone. They had Sonia Nazario speak to dozens of the nation's largest non-profit groups at the Ford Foundation in NYC.

The Isabel Allende Foundation helped Olga Sanchez build a bakery in Chiapas, Mexico, where migrants mutilated by the trains could work. The bakery helps raise income for Olga's shelter and to provide money for prosthesis and medical treatments. The Foundation also nominated Olga for the Dalai Lama award called "The Unsung Heroes of Compassion," which she will receive in April, 2009 in San Francisco.

Students at Crawford High School in San Diego worked with KPBS to produce a TV short movie for the book, which won an Emmy. The high school students created pop-up books and took them to elementary schools to discuss the immigration.

In Chiapas, Mexico, government immigration authorities were prodded to improve treatment of migrant children. They built a shelter so that children who were detained would be kept apart from older inmates.

Hundreds of readers have sent money, clothing, and even visited some of the people Sonia Nazario describes in the book who help migrants along the train route. Some have gone to visit Olga Sanchez and Padre Leo. Others have visited the food-throwers in Veracruz to thank them for their generosity.