Tag Archives: opportunity

As we continue our tour of La Paz, we met Efrain, an energetic fourth-grader who lives near the Pedro Poveda School. Like any child, Efrain is proud of what he owns and likes to show his belongings to visitors. He shares an infectious smile with us as he holds up a prized pair of shoes Josefina has brought him. He’s equally excited to show us the kittens he’s raising. They sleep in their own little bed beside the bed he shares with his brother in a bedroom where the whole family sleeps.

Efrain with his new shoes

Getting support at Pedro Poveda

His mom works long hours as a cleaner, so this excellent student spends afternoons at the community center, where he breezes through most of his homework. When he has trouble, local college students help him master challenging material in their roles as volunteer tutors.

Efrain lives with his mom and three siblings in a small, single-bedroom home owned by his grandmother. She used to rent it to lodgers, but she let her daughter and grandchildren move in to save money as they struggled with hardships and poverty after the children’s father abandoned them.

Efrain faces many challenges, but he has resources, particularly the tireless support of Josefina, our Children Incorporated Coordinator in La Paz. She was the principal of the Pedro Poveda School he attends, but she retired five years ago at age 70 to run the community center. The center was once a simple library, but she had a vision for it to be so much more. She transformed it into a comprehensive facility for her students, where they could have a stable refuge from sometimes difficult home lives and learn modern skills to get ahead.

A vision for the children

Efrain faces many challenges, but he has resources, particularly the tireless support of Josefina, our Children Incorporated Coordinator in La Paz.

I’m fascinated by Josefina and ask her many questions after we leave Efrain for the next visit, but she doesn’t talk about herself much. She prefers to talk about her vision for the children, focusing on their needs and ways to ameliorate the hardships in their lives. We know she has lived in La Paz for most of her life. While she isn’t a nun nor does she use the title “Sister”, she does belong to a religious order, and her faith has led her to devote her life to helping children. She lives simply, sharing communal space with other women from the order, all of whom come to La Paz just to work with her at the community center.

Meeting Carla

Our next visit is with Carla, who was enrolled in the Children Incorporated program while she was a student at Pedro Poveda. Carla works as a teacher and has been pursuing further education to become a linguist. She is happily married to her husband, a mechanic named Juan Carlos, and the couple has a three-year-old daughter.

Life hasn’t always been good. Carla was abandoned by her parents at age 8. They left her with her grandmother, a vendor in the local market with few resources to take care of her properly. Thankfully, she was a student at Pedro Poveda and was quickly enrolled in child sponsorship. Carla still writes letters to her sponsor, practicing her English and expressing gratitude for the role they played in helping her thrive.

Josefina, always the gracious host, and so proud to show the work being done through the program she leads, hasn’t taken us on a typical site visit. Carla isn’t in the program anymore, and her daughter is too young to be sponsored. Josefina has brought us here so we can see how a woman who was once sponsored has done since leaving the program.

Even more importantly, she wants to show us her vision for Efrain’s future. From a broken home to a stable home; from surviving to thriving. This is who Josefina is and this is what she brings to the children and the families touched by her program. She’s a woman who can look at a child and see their future, and then devote her whole life to helping them get there.

***

HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN BOLIVIA?

You can sponsor a child in Bolivia in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Bolivia that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, and I flew into La Paz just before sunrise, after an overnight trip from Richmond. I was woozy from fatigue or the elevation — 13,000 feet above sea level — and grateful when a young woman woke up at 4 am to check us into our hotel.

A City in the Mountains

I woke up as the sun rose, and got my first view of an amazing vertical city. I’ve never seen anywhere else like it; skyscrapers and colonial architecture sit unevenly, side-by-side, built on the hills that once made this city so difficult to navigate. Bridges, new since Luis’ last trip here, have made connections that never existed over ravines and valleys, letting even the poorest residents make trips that were once impossible.

Not every place is accessible by bridge though, and automobile traffic is congested and slow. Many residents still walk because they can’t afford a car or to avoid congestion. The city introduced a cable car system in 2014 to address their needs. This system, Mi Teleférico, connects La Paz with its poorer neighbor, El Alto, the highest major city in the world, built another 1,500 feet up the mountains.

La Paz is impoverished, but El Alto is also a grim place, home to recently dispossessed farming families fleeing drought and famine. The families are primarily from indigenous backgrounds, and they face additional hardships seeking jobs and opportunities. Until Mi Teleférico, they were only connected to opportunities in the more prosperous city below by slow buses on long, winding roads.

The cable cars were designed to cost less than the buses, and are powered by the sun. Residents use them to get to the sprawling markets in El Alto, and tourists use them for the stunning views of the cities below.

The image of those cable cars and the bridges lingers long after I first saw them. I keep reflecting on how this infrastructure, a gift from the state government, has empowered so many people and changed their lives so dramatically.

We visit neighborhoods that Luis remembers from his last trip, before the bridge, and he remarks on the improvements. Unsteady brick shacks have been upgraded into sturdy concrete homes, safer and more stable over the soft soil and steep slopes they are built on.

I am reminded that it is often the simplest thing, like building a bridge—or sponsoring a child—that can make all the difference.

Parts of La Paz may just as well have been on the moon for those without the means to drive. Now, three bridges and these amazing cable carts in the sky connect the city. I am reminded that it is often the simplest thing, like building a bridge—or sponsoring a child—that can make all the difference.

Exploring Pedro Poveda

Of course, we didn’t visit these sites alone. Josefina, our volunteer coordinator, gave us a tour of the city, showing us some of the highlights and attractions. At a bustling market, we ran into two children sponsored through Children Incorporated, Daniel and Nicole, who rushed up to kiss and hug Josefina.

The children’s mother owns a small tienda at the market—a tin shack where she prepares breakfast 7 days a week. By day, the children’s father works as a taxi driver. Their mother works a second shift as a taxi driver after the market closes every evening.

After exchanging money at a local bank, we went to Pedro Poveda. Like everything here, the school is built on a hill, and there are many stairs that lead up to the classrooms. We first visited students in a carpentry class, who are learning the trade. We also visited students in an electronics class working on small electronics like radios, and then a cooking class, where students were learning to combine local food with their meals — pasta with local spinach, or other vegetables.

After, we visited the community center directly across from the school, where Josefina had been the principal of for 15 years. Originally a library, she helped transform the center into an after-school program for students who have parents who work long hours, or suffer from complex behavioral problems and need extra support and love.

The room was filled with children busily working on homework or teaching games. Local university students volunteer their time as after-school tutors. After homework is done, the children are invited to the playroom for crafts and games.

***

HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN BOLIVIA?

You can sponsor a child in Bolivia in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Bolivia that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD