Interview
¿What inspired you to start your foundation?
What inspired me and a friend to open a house for children who had no family to take responsibility for them was the fact that, until then, almost all homes were ‘Oliver Twist’ like: big, impersonal, where children were not treated as individuals but as a mass. We didn¡t like this, and we thought that since these children had been unfortunate enough not to have a family that could take care of them, protect them and love them, these immense homes were like and additional ‘punsihment’ for them, and that they deserved a smaller, more family like environment where to grow. Treating them as individuals, helping them develop their individual skills, tastes and gifts seemed the obvious thing to do. However, the home would not have ever existed if God hadn’t put step-stones in our way. Everything turned out in a way that, when I was only 20 years old, we had ‘in our hands’ 12 girls that ranged from 8 to 15 years old. This was so not so much because of we theorized and thought about with Javier Orrego (my partner for 15 years in the Foundation), but because things evolved in a way in which clearly the Lord marked the way.
Nowadays the Foundation has two homes, one for 18 girls, one for 18 boys. In them, the children live like children do in their families: they go to school, they come home to do homework, watch a bit of TV, play… fight too. We try to get their families back in shape for them to go back to their mothers (there are very few fathers around, almost none). Sometimes this is impossible because the mother is very damaged by drugs, mental illnesses, etc., so there we have two other options: if the child is under 6, we try to get him or her an adoptive family (this is very difficult. We have only gotten new families for 6 or 7 children in all these years). When the child is over 6, and there’s no family around, we help them to study and become technicians or professionals. So far, in 24 years, we have had over 150 children that have been in our home.