Immigration Reform Crisis 2014 News: Which non-profits, citizens are helping the children crossing the border?

As more and more children are pouring into Texas' Rio Grande Valley, more people are responding to the call for help. And it's not just the government. Local non-profit agencies and faith-based groups are helping out as well.

Groups like the Texas-wide Catholic Charities are acting as a buffer between the federal government and undocumented child immigrants  coming over the U.S.-Mexico border in droves. They are feeding them, giving them shelter and even helping them get legal representation as they make their way through immigration court.

"This is our calling, our opportunity to serve," said Sister Leticia Benavides of Catholic Charities told MSNBC.com. "As a Christian myself, I find that this is my obligation to be here. And I think that all of the volunteers that you see here are here because of that. They have a call, we all have a call to serve, and this is our time to serve."

"Catholic Charities and its partner, Save the Children, an international non-profit, are practiced in emergency relief," the website reported. "Catholic Charities operates much like a federal disaster agency throughout the region, swooping into areas devastated by anything from extreme weather to a health crisis. Save the Children is an expert in international refugee crises, which is exactly how they view the situation at the U.S. border."

The assistance Catholic Charities provides is indispensable, as volunteers make their way to bus stations in areas in the Rio Grande, which is one of the hot spots in the border crisis. There, the volunteers greet migrants every day and help them find Catholic Charities assistance centers.

Further up, in north Texas the Catholic Charities of Dallas and the Dallas Hispanic Bar Association are recruiting bilingual attorneys. The lawyers will offer free services to the unaccompanied minors. About 160 lawyers have already volunteered, according to the Star-Telegram.

"We are seeing more and more volunteers," said Rocio Cristina Garcia, a member of the bar association told the newspaper. "Every day the number is growing." So far 393 children have been help this year.

"In some miraculous way everybody has reached out and helped," Sister Norma Pimentel, director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley, told television station KVUE. 

But it's not just faith-based groups helping out. In East El Paso, Texas, a businesswoman named Mamie Salazar-Harper has invested $20,000 of her own money into building a shelter for migrant children, reported El Paso, Inc.

Her shelter, which has around 75 beds, waits to clear some regulatory hurdles before it can go into operation, but it's a move that's much needed as the federal shelter system in place for arriving immigrants continues to remain full.

According to reports, around 5,000 beds remain in federally contracted shelters in the region. Those should fill up quickly as more than 50,000 children have arrived from Central America and more are expected before the end of the year.

Though much of the attention on volunteer efforts involved with the immigration crisis focuses on groups in the United States, another group in Mexico does a small part to make sure people survive. 

By providing meals to children and others who are making the trip from Central America through Mexico by train, a group of women known as Las Patronas lend a hand as well. Though the women have been helping out for years, their role has taken on further importance with the influx of children making the trip alone.

"Before it was just the men who migrated, but not anymore. The whole family goes - women, pregnant women, young children and babies. We've seen mothers on the train with their babies," Julia Ramirez of Las Patronas said in a report.