We are organizing the NOT FORGOTTEN PROJECT — PARA LAS MADRES, a week of humanitarian search efforts, documentation, remembrance, and public accountability work west of El Paso.

This region has seen over 300 deaths in recent years, many of them women and teenage girls. We search because families deserve answers and the missing should not disappear without documentation, recovery, or remembrance.

For six days, small volunteer teams will conduct difficult off-trail desert searches in remote terrain near the U.S.-Mexico border, including areas facing rapid industrial development and expansion. We are increasingly concerned that land is being cleared and transformed before meaningful search efforts ever occur.

These searches are physically demanding and entirely volunteer-driven. The work includes desert search operations, GPS documentation and mapping, coordination and logistics, water, fuel, and field supplies, safety and communications equipment, and support for traveling volunteers.

The week will also include a community gathering at the Borderlands Rainbow Center featuring a book reading, discussion, storytelling, and activist conversation focused on remembrance, humanitarian work, and public accountability. The project will conclude with a women-led faith gathering in the desert honoring the missing, the lost, and the found.

While agencies often respond only after remains are discovered, we continue conducting proactive searches month after month.

Every donation directly helps sustain this work and the people carrying it forward.

If you are unable to donate, sharing this fundraiser helps tremendously.

This work is difficult, emotional, and entirely volunteer-driven — but we believe the missing deserve to be searched for, documented, and remembered.

For years, volunteers have returned to this desert month after month because too many people have been left behind and too many families are still waiting for answers.

Your support helps make these searches possible.

It helps volunteers travel long distances, carry water and safety equipment into remote terrain, document sites responsibly, and continue searching areas that are rapidly changing due to development and border infrastructure expansion.

Even small donations help put searchers in the field.

If you can contribute, thank you.

If you can share this fundraiser, that matters too.

For the missing.

For the families.

For each other.

Para las madres.