Tag Archives: sponsors

After more than a week in the mountains of Bolivia, I’m headed home — back to Richmond, Virginia, and my life of comparative ease and comfort. As the ground falls away beneath the plane, I’m staring out the window, trying to compose coherent thoughts, but they are lost amid a thousand mental images of the people and scenes I’ve experienced in the last few days.

Our tour guide: An architect rises from poverty

Roberto Andrade’s smiling, confident face keeps flashing across my mind. The Children Incorporated volunteer and architect of our Montero school was once himself a sponsored child. Throughout the week, he’s been our local tour guide and companion, showing us around the city and introducing us to hundreds of children he’s helping on the path to self-sufficiency in adulthood.

There were so many Children Incorporated kids in so many schools that I can’t even estimate how many I met.

The nuns: Septuagenarians lead by example

Then I focus on Sister Pilar. The 75-year-old nun ventures into the darkest slums of Santa Cruz, looking for homeless women and children. She brings them back to live at her bright, spacious villa while the children go to school and their mothers get job training and placement — and then their own homes and a new life.

My thoughts move to Sister Geraldina, another 75-year old nun, whose laughter is infectious and energy is boundless. My whole trip to Bolivia was prompted by Sister Geraldina, who has overseen the school’s expansion from a collection of run-down buildings to a modern facility with space for hundreds of children.

The children: New schools, new shoes and new kittens

And then, of course, there are the children themselves — scores of faces flash across my mind, smiling and shy but curious about me, a new face in their school. At school, there is no evidence of the poverty in which they live — armed with new clothes, shoes and school supplies from Children Incorporated, they are indistinguishable from any other children of the world. They are boisterous, mischievous and cheerful, talking and playing as their teachers try to settle them into their schoolwork after a break.

Roberto, Luis and Roberto’s wife in their home in Bolivia

There were so many Children Incorporated kids in so many schools that I can’t even estimate how many I met. Their faces and names flash before my eyes like pages in a scrapbook, but my thoughts solidify for a moment on Efrain. After three years in the program, he is now a fourth-grader in La Paz. He’s a good student and lives in a one-bedroom home with his mother, three siblings and three kittens. It’s the kittens that he wanted to talk about — they sleep next to him and his brother and, like any child, he is enamored with them. He was also enamored with his shoes — he showed them off with pride and told me about receiving them from Children Incorporated. With three kittens and a new pair of shoes, Efrain smiled like the luckiest, most privileged child in the world.

The professor: A sponsor makes all the difference

I hope he ends up like Carla, and I feel a rush of joy as I think of her standing on the street with her daughter near her grandmother’s fruit stand in La Paz. Carla, now 30, started in the Children Incorporated program at the age of 9 after her parents left her to find work in Argentina. She was raised by her grandmother with help from a Children Incorporated sponsor who provided her with clothes, school supplies and food. Her rise from poverty was astounding — she is now a professor and has her own daughter and she still writes letters to her former Children Incorporated sponsor.

And as the plane rises above the clouds and the world below disappears, I close my eyes and send out fervent wishes and prayers that Efrain’s future — indeed all of their futures — are so bright.

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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

Roberto Andrade and his wife, Verónica, are waiting for us when we step off the plane in hot, humid Santa Cruz. Roberto is an artist and an architect now, but he was once a little boy with enormous potential and struggling parents who worried about his future. They saw the talent and creativity in their son and knew that a quality education would help him develop into a happy, healthy adult.

“Because the happiest people in life aren’t the ones who have everything; the happiest people are those who share everything.”

– Roberto Andrade

It took years of patient waiting, but a sponsor finally stepped forward, and the 8-year old was enrolled at Escuela Cristiana. His art skills blossomed, nurtured by a supportive community, and he discovered his interest in architecture.

school architect rises from poverty

Roberto lives and works in Santa Cruz, following his three passions: art, architecture, and helping children in need. His architectural skills were employed in the expansion of the Montero School in Okinawa, a rural community a few hours out of Santa Cruz. But he is not only a talented artist and architect; he is also a humanitarian who donates his art to raise funds for impoverished children.

Luis with Roberto and his wife

He lived most of his life in Sucre, one of the capitals of Bolivia, where he grew up and attended college. The trip here to Santa Cruz, over 500 km of rough roads, would have once been impossible for his family, but art shows and exhibitions have brought the successful artist to New York City and further.

We’re here to see the inauguration of the school expansion, but this site visit is also a sort of reunion. I first met Roberto in Richmond, where he stopped en route to an art show in New York, and Luis met him on a trip to Bolivia when he was 14 and still in child sponsorship. After graduation, Roberto stayed in touch with Luis and was brought on to work on the school expansion program with Sister Geraldina, our coordinator near Montero.

More than just a school: It’s a window to the future

Before the expansion, this school was heavily overcrowded and poorly ventilated. La Paz is a beautiful colonial city above the clouds, and Santa Cruz a populous modern city with chain stores familiar to any American. But here in the countryside near Montero, people live in lean-tos and one-room huts with thatched roofs, and poverty is as staggering as the heat.

The poverty may be greater, but the parents aren’t different from those we’ve met in La Paz. They hold the same hopes Roberto’s parents did – for education to empower and elevate their children into stable adulthood. The school is more than just a means to an end: it’s a powerful symbol of a future. Before the expansion, and despite substandard conditions including poor ventilation and no sewage system, this symbol drew more than 1,000 children from all over the region, stretching it far past capacity.

Before the renovation, over 1,000 children packed into the dilapidated school — with bad ventilation and no sewer system.

Sister Geraldina: a 75-year-old volunteer leads the charge

Our volunteer coordinator Sister Geraldina

Our volunteer coordinator, Sister Geraldina, runs the school. She has devoted her life to helping children, since entering a religious order as a young woman in her native Chile. After 25 years of service there, she came to Bolivia, where she’s worked for the last 31 years.

She starts her mornings with a modest breakfast and immediately gets to work, involved with the children throughout the entire school day. In spare moments, she organizes parents and community events and spends her afternoons scheduling the other sisters and helping with their work.

If that all wasn’t enough, she also planned and oversaw every aspect of the expansion, upgrading this school from a collection of run-down buildings to a modern, well-ventilated facility with classroom space for the hundreds of students who attend. She’s already working on a second and third proposal, and she uses our visit to show us the improvements still necessary to accommodate more children in conditions conducive to learning.

Sister Geraldina is warm, but very serious, and never slows down as she coordinates the inauguration. Her energy belies her age. At 75, she worked side-by-side with the much younger Roberto to oversee the construction. In just a year, the duo and their construction team built five new slab-and-beam classrooms, restrooms, and a modern sewage system, with funds raised in tandem by our child sponsorship network and Sister Geraldina through the local community.

The school: new beginnings for the future

More than 600 people from the local communities attended the inauguration. The event is kicked off with performances of traditional dances by joyous, happy children in the gym. After the event, families of the 80 children in sponsorship meet with Luis to discuss their community and the children’s needs.

The celebration continues the next day when the children attend school for the first time in their new classrooms. In these new rooms, these children seem like children everywhere, laughing at silly jokes, goofing around, and working on class assignments.

growing up and growing into service

Education provides a lifeline for these children. Despite crushing poverty and a childhood marked by need, Roberto has become a successful artist and architect, dedicated to improving the lives of children who are growing up in even more impoverished locales. Some of these children will move on from the dusty towns and rough, dirt roads of their past, and others will stay, engineering the conditions and infrastructure to elevate the next generation, the same way their parents and Sister Geraldina did; the same way that Roberto did.

I look at the children of Montero the same way I imagine that Roberto’s parents looked at him, and I see bright futures, full of potential, compassion, and acts of kindness and charity. Which ones will become architects? Teachers? Doctors? How will they give back to the next generation?

***

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.

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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