HOW THE CHILDREN GOT HERE

The images show clean children, happy, and well educated, but they did not arrive this way. They were dirty, with lice, without education, very sad, and without hope. But God in his mercy has been transforming them radically. Today they are happy and learning many good things.

There are two fundamental ways that the children come here. One way is that the government brings them here, and the other is when they are brought by a parent or family member. Some of these children are abandoned, orphans, abused, mistreated, children of prostitutes, delinquents, or lived in extreme poverty.

We have 40 children, from the ages of 5 to 19 years, some have been here all of their lives, they came when they were babies and the majority of them have no family members who visit.

Given the situation in which they lived, the majority of them tested at a much lower school grade than other children their ages. Their academic abilities were also tremendously low. The children that did have parents were not very concerned with education, not caring whether they went to school or not, or whether they spent the entire day in the streets. We have had to work very hard, first of all, to motivate them to study, to excel and to break free from the curse of coming from a broken family. A family in which alcohol, drugs, prostitution and crime were their daily bread. Secondly, we have had to work hard to get them up to current standards for their studies and to get them into the grades that they should be in. Thirdly, we have worked to maintain the motivation and burning flame of interest for studies, improvement, and the things of God.