Give at-risk Colombian children a safe home

With the holidays and Giving Tuesday coming up, we are excited to announce our newest project for our children. For over three months we have been preparing to introduce a new sustainable model for the children who live in Nuevo Amanecer, where we will integrate the insitutional care cycle with our new infrastructure, learning workshops and loving strategies useful for critical moments. As a result, this will increase the child’s motivation and sense of belonging to our programs to ensure that their time at the institution is unique and inspiring. Experience has taught us that love is the most powerful tool and that directed physical activity is an effective antidote for curing depression and anxiety, common side-effects of living a childhood full of neglect and abuse.  

Through our work on building this new model of intervention, we have reflected on several stories of children who exemplify the justification of our project: born on June 12, 2004, a set of loving kind twins known as the “Perez Twins”* came into this world, not knowing the misfortune that they would live. “We were raised by an alcoholic and angry father, and lived many years of physical abuse and continuous neglect. Eventually we grew tired of this torture, so we decided to flee in search for a better life. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as easy as we thought, since in our first escape we were taken in by the FARC, a guerrilla force that prides themselves in taking in young boys, like us, so we can join the ‘revolutionary fight’, but knowing the danger this could bring us, we continued our venture by ourselves. Our misfortune seemed to have ended after we were taken in by an aunt, but this happiness didn’t last long, as our father was able to find us and managed to threaten our aunt to the point where we had to go back to the streets. After a few days, our uncle found us wandering in trash, and took us into his home, but again the fear behind our father’s threat forced our uncle to put us into government protection. We have never been under institutional care, but with Fundacion Niños de los Andes’ we feel that children like us are incredibly lucky to be a part of something special, a home, a family, one we never thought we would ever have. Nowadays we are living a completely different life. We have realized that not everyone is like our father, that we do deserve to be happy, and that we can reach our dreams into becoming professional soccer players.”

For these boys, they have lost their sense of love, trust and feeling protected as their lives have consisted of running away from misery, starvation and violence. These circumstances are generally the key ingredients that formulate drug abuse, and gang violence. But for the “Perez Twins”*, soccer and music became their tools and passion for handling the difficult emotions that stem from years of abuse. To this day, they are known in our Foundation for being kind and mature boys and for us, stories like these motivate us into building a better environment and experience for children who cannot afford to suffer more. At Fundacion Niños de los Andes, we believe that through love we can transform the complex psychological and emotional problems that our children at-risk experience.

With this upcoming holiday season, it is important for us to reflect on the hardships life brings us, and the blessings we are fortunate enough to live with. After many hardships, these boys have found a home where they feel safe, a feeling they lost hope for. Luckily, we are blessed to have donors and people like you who play a big role in contributing for the greater good for our children. 

Thank you again for all your support in helping us build a safe and empowering environment for our children! Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays!

*Their last name was changed in order to protect their identity.

I’m Angelica Vega, born and raised in Houston, Texas in a big Colombian family, who for many years have been very close to the Foundation’s work. I pursued my college studies in Florida, and decided to go back to my country and work in a non-profit organization. For over a year now, I have been working hand in hand with Patricia Gonzalez in managing GlobalGiving, translation and administrative matters. During this year I have not only witnessed firsthand the hard work that is put in everyday to meet the needs of the children, but also, I’ve been able to meet so many of the children who have come and gone in the different programs. While working here I have also had the pleasure to meet many of the special donors, like Valerie Thompson and Vincent Dixon, Andrés Fabián Suarez, who play an important role in contributing to this cause. More importantly, I was positively struck by the number of visits by international donors, who through GlobalGiving’s quarterly reports have been informed of the progress of the work at the Foundation.

These visits were particularly special this time of the year, as in Fundación Niños de Los Andes, we have seen an exponential growth in the number of girls coming to our homes. With this being said, I noticed the special bonds our donors made with the girls, and vice versa.  So far, this year in one of the programs, they have provided attention for 466 children, of which 407 are girls, indicating an 87% attention coverage for girls. Unfortunately, this only points to one thing, and in our country, it is, the alarming increase of sexual abuse cases. For many of these girls, their cases have been perpetuated from their own family members.

One afternoon, I had the chance to sit down with a large group of girls and Vincent Dixon’s daughters. During this conversation, we shared our hobbies, our dreams, places we’d like to visit and things we would like to achieve in our life. Amidst this conversation, each of the girls’ stories came up, and they bravely shared their tough past. While it is alarming to read about these horrors in statistics, it is a completely different thing to see their faces expressing their jaw-opening stories, which left Vincent’s daughters and I completely heartbroken. But through this hardship, their excitement and eagerness to achieve their dreams was left untouched. One would typically expect that these types of conversations would make visitors uncomfortable, or that it would be too difficult for the girls to share them, but for these girls and our visitors it was the opposite. Instead, they showed strength, bravery, and courage, which shined in their eyes and could be heard through their voice. They have taught me courage and within these girls I can see the courage to get past the dark past that they chose to not only leave behind, but to become a better human being and hopefully a loving mother to their children in the future.

From my time with Fundacion Ninos de los Andes, I can conclude that the Foundation has a lot of work ahead, but with everyone’s support it will become easier to achieve, so we can get better results and generate greater impact for the children in Colombia.

After working with this platform, there are not enough words to express the gratitude our Foundation feels for each one of you!