Welcome to The Oz Project, a
non-profit organization that gives disadvantaged children, and young adults, experiences that ignite the imagination and inspire dreams.
Our Beginning
In the summer of 2006, a hot air balloon ride in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico changed my life forever. The experience felt like floating in Glenda the Good Witch’s bubble, pure magic. I realized two things in the air that day: There are no real borders in this world. And there are no limits on your dreams, not a single one. If you can dream it, you can do it. It was especially significant to me because I’d become someone who no longer knew what her dreams were. I had food, shelter and education, and a quiet life as a mother and writer in the Texas suburbs. But I was longing for something else. I just didn’t know what it was.
San Miguel’s beloved pilot, Jay Kimball, invited me to be ballast on his next flight. He called it a journey through “the realm of the rainbow.” A balloon drifts wherever gentle winds take it. That day we landed in a rural schoolyard. Children, who had been in classrooms on a routine Tuesday morning, looked out of the window and saw a hot air balloon appear out of nowhere and drift to the ground. They poured out of the school, running, shouting, laughing. Suddenly I was at the bottom of a pile of wriggling bodies, being tumbled, pulled, kissed and hugged. It was one of most joyful moments of my life. They helped us fold the balloon, or envelope, stuff it into the bag and pull it onto the trailer.
We were about to leave when a little girl named Lydia stepped out of the crowd. She was shy and I had only some basic Spanish, but we were able to understand each other. She told me she wanted to be a doctor one day, one of the first big dreams of a little girl with a ponytail, uneven socks and a smile like the sky. She asked if we’d come back one day and take up her and her classmates. I told her I’d like to do that very much. On the next flight, we landed near a rural village of dust, cactus and shacks made of sticks. The tin roofs were held in place by big rocks. It was a world I’d never seen. As the balloon landed, children tied their donkeys to trees and came running, laughing, asking to help. We showed them how to pull on the crown line to release the hot air, how to fold the envelope, and put it the bag. They helped us roll the balloon into the trailer.
By that time, I’d learned how to say, “Do you want to go up someday?” Quieren a subir un dia? Their faces filled with smiles and they nodded. I wondered why they weren’t in school and learned their families couldn’t afford to send them. Their days were about tending donkeys, but for a few minutes one morning, they helped crew a hot air balloon. It happened again and again, these landings in isolated places—and there were always one or two children who set themselves apart from the crowd. Rosa. Marisol. Juan Carlos. Jorge. Daniela. Leo. They wanted to demonstrate their manners by shaking our hands or they wanted to know how exactly a hot air balloon flies, how far it might go.
They wanted to know if we’d take them up one day. I began to realize that within each hidden village and within every orphanage are children with the intelligence and desire to become great teachers, scientists, doctors, artists, presidents. But it takes the acknowledgment and encouragement of people outside of their villages to help them follow the road of their dreams. If the balloon could inspire them as it had me, I wanted to bring them one, so they could see far beyond the tin rooftops, to float and dream in the realm of the rainbow.
