In Penipe, a beautifull small town in Ecuador there is a place called The House of Charity (Casa de la Caridad). Its doors are always open to people of all ages providing shelter, education and other services. The House accepts all people without exceptions from babies to adults with traumatic past. Most of the clients have been abused during their lives or abandoned, thus carrying personal developmental problems, consequences of cruelty they have suffered from their relatives.
Luckily the House gives them the opportunity they have never received in their homes. The House provides a family like environment, where all members are as brothers and sisters. The problem is that these people need more than acceptance and love. Although the Casa de la Caridad (House of Charity) continues to grow and welcome more children and adults, the funding has been reduced. In consequence, the House faces a serious challenge to obtain neccessary funding to be able to take care of all the people with dignity , because the staff and resources are limited. This is the cruel reality we want to change.
The Tracing Our Home is the key that opens the doors of the House. Please check it out and provide your hand if you wish.
Our goal is no other than helping the children with different abilities to live in the House of Charity. One of the objectives is to be able to obtain school supplies for both the kids attending school and those being taught in small clasrooms in the House. Also materials used to ensure early stimulation to promote psychological development, hygienic and sanitary supplies and medicines will be funded with the raised money.
It is intended to urgently fund school materials, stimulation and cleaning and medicines that are necessary for children of the Casa de la Caridad to learn, both at home and at school during this year and avoid the convulsions that , increasingly, affect them in all aspects.
Our goal is that, despite being boys and girls with different abilities that have been mistreated and abandoned, find in the House of Charity, a home full of love and opportunities, trying to encourage them to lead a life as independent as possible.
But this contribution will not only be an economic contribution on their part, since it is intended to improve the whole environment, specializing and training caregivers of children, psychologists, physiotherapists, teachers and socio-health care within the home, with various therapies and formations.
This project is one more step in a long way, with the goal that all the capacities of children are strengthened, that they can heal the wounds of their past and look to the future with hope.
Trazando Nuestro Hogar is based on the fact that the (currently) 54 children with different abilities who have been mistreated physically and psychologically, and then abandoned in poor conditions, are able to rebuild their lives in a beautiful family all together.
We believe it is important that the children of the house receive the attention they deserve and can acquire the basic skills to function in their day to day. Similarly, the budget constraints of the Casa de la Caridad for housing more children than subsidies allow it sometimes derive in lack of medical equipment and medicines.
For this reason we want to equip the classrooms with school materials, the house of tools for the early stimulation of the youngest ones and equip them with basic cleaning tools and medicines that can stop their seizures.
Each of them carries a story that no person, child or adult, should live. It is time for the present to weigh more than the past.
We would like you to know a little more about them, so you can follow us on our Facebook page:
Tracing Our Home - Casa de la Caridad
When we took off from Spain towards Ecuador we could not imagine the impact that the volunteer scholarship of the University of Seville was going to have on our lives. The first big change was to get to know each other among us, totally different young people moved by the same concern and with the same purpose. As a result of that, what began as a dream and hypothetical conversations has given rise not only to a beautiful and lasting friendship but to a real and tangible project.
Since then our commitment to the House of Charity has been full. We have mobilized our nearby circles to collect and obtain medical supplies for children, but we believe that it is time to take a step further. We want to draw an even bigger circle where all households and people can participate. We can not say that our team is made up of four people, there are many hands that have helped us in this way, contributing, supporting and taking an interest in them, for the children that make up the House of Charity. With this project we make an appeal, we look for you as an ally of a cause that is worth fighting for, we want you to be part of our Home, the fact that you have arrived here already implies a lot. We thank you for drawing lines with us.
But, if you have come to this section to know our stories below we leave you a brief description of the people who dream every day with this project:
Begoña (Granada, 25 years old): Thanks to the volunteer scholarship from the University of Seville, I was able to see first-hand the greatness of the place, Penipe. A small town, away from the city, where nothing is breathed but peace. I knew all the foundations that coexisted in that place, all related to Disabilities (or, rather, Different Capabilities). One of them, La Casa de la Caridad, a home, a refuge for boys and girls who had been mistreated in the worst way and abandoned to their fate. I listened to their stories, I read reports, I lived what they lived, I saw the first day of many of them in that house ... A boy with 10 years, constitution of 2, legs and arms broken, a huge pain .... Today that child smiles because he is cared for and loved by those who are there. I returned to Spain with a desire to return. This happened again to the second return to my house. I feel that these children deserve more, they deserve to be able to have an education, a stimulation, a dignified life that they can not afford.
I work as a nurse, I am a Special Education teacher, a Master student of Emergency Care with courses for Pediatric Patient Care, a volunteer in different associations, and even so, they teach me.
Cristina (Sevilla, 25 Years): I am a nurse. I have been volunteering in Penipe Ecuador thanks to Begoña who after telling me her experience and experience in the House of Charity I wanted to embark with her in this adventure to be able to know in first person the reality in which they were living the children who were in the house of charity.
This place seemed a wonderful place, because thanks to the house of charity these children are having the opportunity to have the life they really deserve surrounded by love, affection and affection. But they can still choose to have a better life because although they are very well looked after they still need materials for both physical and cognitive stimulation, learning and communication material, even some material to maintain hygiene for all the children ... Know these children It has given me more than I could ever imagine, being a volunteer opens you up to new values, cultures, new people and seeing the things that really matter in life.
Begoña (Sevilla, 21 years old): I still remember the turn of the bowels that was the first hug of one of the girls in this shelter. And I better remember the feeling of incomprehension, anger and deep pain when Bego told me that that little girl who had embraced me as soon as she arrived had been found tied in a yard with some dogs. And that is the truth, hard and painful, does not need makeup. Just as true and healing is to know that this girl, today, can run down that hall giving kisses and hugs because this home exists.
I now end psychology giving meaning to my life, accompanying from my profession the people with whom I choose to live, growing and walking on the shoulders of giants. My world turned 180 degrees after my life in Ecuador, now I intend to continue living with that walk.
We need you, I hope you can be aware of how much, hopefully you can understand that you were present in my afternoons sitting on the carpet dreaming of a world that was aware of everything that I lived and felt. I hope you understand that you can be a light rather than light this bonfire, formed by nothing more and nothing less than ordinary people who decide to stand and walk.