Transforming The Lives of Children in Cartagena

Dear Friends,

About 1 year ago, a group of close friends and I started working on making a reality our vision for transforming the lives of children in my hometown Cartagena. Those kids are vulnerable to drugs, gangs, domestic violence, malnutrition, and many other threats. The challenge was big, but with your support, we were able to get started.

In early February, we finalized the adequation of a facility and started providing breakfast to 50 kids every weekday. Since then, we have distributed over 6900 meals! This has brought very gratifying moments to all of us involved, a very special one was when a father in tears said: 

“If it wasn’t for you, my kid would be going hungry to school today”

I trust you experience the same fulfillment I do by knowing that your contributions can make such an impact. This is not all, the team is convinced that to make a life long-lasting transformation on those kids, we need to tackle their environment, the relationship with their parents, hygiene & education. As a result, we have conducted several activities throughout the year and found fascinating results, which you can see below:

• Music and Arts days
• Entertainment days include going out for football, puppet shows and playing in the best playgrounds of the city!
• Hygiene and dental health lessons

One of our most recent sessions consisted of using Augmented Reality and Games as a Tool to Discover Skills.

But we don't want to stop with the kids, we also identified a great need of education and training in the mothers, and soon started a program for empowering women through workshops where they can learn how to avoid abusing the kids and also how to make products to generate income, here is a video where you can see this in action Empowering Woman Through Life Skills. The moms have expressed immense gratitude for multiple reasons. First, their relationship with the kids improves as they recur more to talking rather than physical violence; second, they really enjoy the fellowship with the other moms; third, they learn valuable skills to produce income. In fact, 3 moms already started commercializing food-based products.

 Altogether, the last 10 months have been plenty of challenges, excitement, and satisfaction. We were fortunate to have you onboard supporting us along the way. For the year ahead, we have the vision to expand the facilities to be able to reach out to a total of 200 kids, we don't want to turn away any kid that touches our doors, and we need your continued support keep making a long-lasting impact in the lives of those children. Here are two easy ways in which you can help us further: 

1. A monthly contribution of at least 20 USD, that will help us cover the monthly cost for one kid
2. Alternatively, you can also contribute by providing a point-time donation now which we will equally appreciate. All donations can be done here.

Thank you again for the continued support, it means so much for the kids and their families. Looking forward to keeping partnering with you and we wish that you may have a merry Christmas.