Make sure you really read the statistics. If you dig a little you’ll find that your risk of being raped, robbed, assaulted or murdered are greater in Camden NJ than they are in Oaxaca. Would you send your child to Penn, across the river in Philadelphia?
To be fair, University City is nothing like Camden. I would have no issue going to University City, or Oaxaca, but Camden? Ummm, no.
I am not sure that the analogies work really well. Having lived in a city that was --at one time-- the most dangerous in the world in terms of homicides, I can tell you statistics lie. Even in the days with 10-15 executions a day, Ciudad Juarez loved to point to the rate of crime against INNOCENT victims in places like Michigan or New Orleans.
Statistics only go this far, but there is an underlying danger in many places in Mexico. It is not so much the danger to be killed by a group of drug lords or held for ransom, it is the sure LACK of protection and rights for young foreigners (and especially girls) in cities that have very loosely controlled police forces.
Even if you happen to find trouble in one of the multiple crime ridden places in the US, you have a reasonable chance to find the police on your side. Nothing could be farther from the truth is most places in Mexico, and especially in the more remote states. Police often work hand in hand with the most corrupt parts of the government and the organized crime.
If something happens to one in Oaxaca, where will you go turn to? One should really inquire what the safety net consists of on a 24/7 basis as opposed to pay heed to distant stories of a better and safer past. Mexico is full of wonderful people who would give their shirt away to strangers, but that does not limit the corrupt and violent forces that are at work. One only has to look at the teachers’ unions work in the past months: those are infiltrated by violent leaders who have nothing to do with education or working in schools. They are cockroaches and, unfortunately, they dominate the scene.
And, regarding statistics, one does not need to look farther than the laughable State Department warnings. Yep, stay close to Acapulco or Lazaro Cardenas sounds like good advice until one knows how to read a local newspaper or listen to the radio.
Comparing crime in Camden vs. Philly is a no-win situation. I took some risks when I went to college in Philly, that my parents would not want to know about.
I’d only be concerned about what her level of Spanish is. Does she know enough that if she was in an emergency situation, she could ask for help from strangers?
A clinic is also somewhere where low-income folks are very likely to be, and low-income (even in the US) can mean looking for ways to make money that are not on the up and up.
I suggest that if you aren’t confident about your daughter’s Spanish skills, that would be the thing to work on. Get her to improve them ASAP.
The other thing is how much has she traveled on her own? Has she traveled in the US or worked all summer at college away from home?
If she has not navigated being in a US city alone for a month, I would not send her to a Mexican city alone for a month. BUT: if this is a supervised program, where she will be living with other students in the program and there is an on-site local contact, that would allay many fears.
I’ll agree that no matter where a young person goes, they had better not go alone if new to an area. She should have that lesson already.
I do not agree that just because it is “a month in a foreign land” it will automatically be a great experience. But I don’t agree that it should be completely ruled out either.
^True. :)>- I was mostly trying to point out that crime stats need to be looked at carefully. There’s a lot of hyperbole when it comes to crime in Mexico.
I was in Huatulco with my family during the 2006 unrest in Oaxaca City, and a number of people asked me if I feared for our safety. I had to point out that it takes as long to travel between Oaxaca and Huatulco as it does between Boston and NYC and to skip our vacation would be like canceling a trip to Boston because you heard there was gang violence in Brooklyn.
You guys, this young woman will be working with an organization, locals will be looking out for her, she speaks some Spanish, and this is OAXACA and not, say, Syria, we’re talking about. A little perspective, please, Xiggy. And we all know that the only thing you hate more than teachers are teachers’ unions, so any place where they try to leverage some power in the form of protests will be on your bad list 
A parent should be a lot more worried about sending their kid to University of Chicago, Columbia or Yale than to volunteering in Oaxaca…
Boy, such diametrically opposite views.
This might shed some light:
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/americas-mexico/mexico/safety-in-oaxaca-5dbe3c41-ef7d-4397-87ca-28e3bd9ea720?page=1