Laredo,Texas -- Thait Cortes, 8, cuddles 11-month-old Estrellita, one of 120 desperately poor orphans in nearby Mexico. The students and families from Nye Elementary rallied the whole town of Laredo to the cause and as a results, new cribs, diapers, blankets and a continuous stream of loving volunteers rain on orphanage founder "Mama Lupita" Carmona.

These kids were just darling. What I was going for, and I hope that it comes through in the photographs, was the dichotomy of this girl Thait and the other kids living in the orphanage. The one where she is holding the frowning little boy Omar, I felt was the most successful.

I wanted to show Thait's innocent happiness against the desperate emotions of the orphanage kids. And really the fact is that there is a sheer dichotomy between the resources available to these kids in the orphanage south of the border and any child virtually, virtually any child born north of the border. It's just a matter of where a line is drawn on a map, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

Photo Essay by Charles "Stretch" Ledford
StretchPhotography.com