On the move - but nowhere to go

Let The Children Live!'s Pelican Project has outgrown its base in Bello, a municipality to the North of Medellín. Our director, Fr Peter Walters, writes:

"With only one shower and one loo for up to 60 children, our present building does not meet the standards needed to obtain a Sanitary Licence. Our landlord will not give permission for the necessary structural alterations, so we will have to move. We now have to renew our lease from month to month, and we are in constant danger of being evicted at only four weeks notice.

We are in contact with 26 different estate agents, but finding suitable premises at a rent we can afford is proving extremely difficult. The trouble is that we have very special requirements. Of course, the building must have the space, light and other facilities necessary for the Sanitary Licence. But it must also be located in a 'neutral zone', outside the territory of the bandas - the neighbourhood gangs that fight for control over the poorer parts of Medellín.

The violence between these gangs is so intense that the whole families of the members get caught up in it. Most of our children have older brothers who belong to one or other of the bandas, and their very lives would be at risk if they were caught crossing the territory of a rival gang.

Our children come from the most violent district of Medellín, and it is essential that our new base should be situated in an area to which all of them will have safe access. This means that we are having to restrict our search for a suitable building to areas where the rent and other overheads will be much higher than we are paying at present.

In the future, we hope to raise the funds to buy or build a base of our own: but that will take time, so please send an extra donation to help us rent a new centre now."

(For an update on this situation, see A home of our own in Issue 5 of Vivant!)

Room in the Inn?

Rena Mitchell

Medellín was dressed for Christmas. The decorations and the street lights were a delight to behold and Christmas carols sounded everywhere. 'Papa Noel', smiled jovially on the shoppers, 'El Nino Jesus' lay in the manger. Joy was with the world. A lovely memory to take back with me to Sussex? At the end it was not the one in my heart and which haunts me still. For before I left I met Fr Peter Walters - 'Padre Pedro' - and the street-children.

Let The Children Live! was known to me through my church. Our group raises money to help pay the salaries of street-educators who help Fr Peter in his work. I wanted to meet these people so I phoned Fr Peter who invited me to visit the Project at Bello, a small township to the North of Medellín.

Functioning as a day-centre for 50 to 60 children, this small, clay-tiled, whitewashed, terraced house is near the centre of town. Three cool rooms lead one into another through to a small dirt patio. At the rear is the only toilet and shower. Above the door the red and white sign reads 'Fundación ¡Vivan Los Niños!' and below in English, 'Let The Children Live!' Street Educators operate from here together with a fully qualified remedial teacher, and a secretary. Voluntary helpers also come in - one lady runs a soup and sandwich canteen.

The children, ranging in age from seven to fifteen, dressed smartly in white and red tops with red track suit trousers, welcomed us warmly. The uniforms were kept for best and were worn that day in our honour. The children looked healthy and well cared for in sharp contrast to those we met in the streets. On entering the home each child is given a thorough medical and dental check and treatment is administered if needed.

On arrival each morning every child has to have a shower - no discrimination is made between those who arrive dirty and those who may have had access to a washing facility. One toilet and one shower are quite inadequate for all these!

The children do not sleep in the home. Some have a suitable place to sleep, others are taken to residential homes at night. The staff try to identify homes where children are at risk. They visit and make friends with the parents, often single, and try to persuade them to allow the children come into the safety of the Project.

Violence in the country-side has caused many families to seek refuge in the towns, and so there are many more children than there are school places available. Teacher Irene Builes gives daily tuition to help them gain places, and she also coaches those already in school. During the day the children are fed.

We met a fourteen year old who had been persuaded to come into the home just before she was to be put on the streets to make money for her family as a prostitute. Now attending a college to learn Beauty and Hairdressing, she cuts the other childrens hair.

Persuasion is the only means by which the children can be brought within the safety of the house. The street educators have to make these lost children believe that there is a better way of life. Many remain and flourish, but some drift back to the streets - to glue-sniffing, stealing and vice. Soon they are on the downward spiral to cocaine and crack addiction, violence, and an early death from drugs, a knife or a bullet. The euphoria induced by glue-sniffing raises them briefly above the misery in which they live only to plunge them later into an even deeper abyss of hopelessness and despair.

We went with street-educators Jos and Luis Eduardo down into the market place. There we met some of the desechables - the disposable ones as they are called. These children have old eyes, sharp and sad, from horrors they have witnessed unfit for a childs eyes and vile scenes they have experienced. They haunt the street markets, scavenging food from bin bags. They may earn a few pesos running errands or shining shoes. At night they sleep in doorways, in cardboard boxes or in a shanty town on a rubbish dump where the pickings may provide a bite to eat or a discarded rag to wear. These rat-infested and disease-ridden cardboard cities - tigurios - are the haunts of criminals and drug-pushers. Child prostitution is a means of feeding a starving family or to fund drug addiction. Teenage pregnancies are numerous, infant mortality is high. Life is cheap.

All the workers risk attack, even death, from criminals who do not want to lose their young accomplices. They go unarmed, except for their faith. No company car comes with the job, no plush well furnished office. Their beat is grim beyond belief. May we increase our efforts to continue to pay the small salaries - the equivalent of two thousand pounds - of these young men and women who are trying to lift suffering children out of misery and degradation into a normal, happy and healthy childhood.

(Note: During the Summer of 1997, after Rena Mitchell's visit, the Bello project evolved into the Pelican Project, and is no longer located in Bello... the work continues...)

Spot the difference

 

Irene Builes is a teacher at the day-centre run by Funvini, the Colombian daughter charity of Let The Children Live! The centre is part of the project designed to prevent children who have started to come on to the streets from degenerating into real gamines (street-urchins). Our aim is to reintegrate these children into their families and the school system.

Irene's job is to break down the children's prejudices against school and to encourage them to want to learn. Whilst seeking school-places for them, Irene teaches the youngsters the three Rs; and helps those who go to school with their home-work and any subjects they find difficult. She also works closely with teachers in the local schools to help them to understand the special problems of the former street-children.

Irene writes, "We were sitting down having a break, when some of the children started talking about the old days before Funvini. There has been an incredible change in many of the youngsters: they are aware of it and they laugh about the way they used to be. Three years ago, they thought of themselves as gamines, apart from the fact that they didnt take drugs or sniff glue. They spent more of their time in the street than at home. They would rob the drunks whom they found in the main square in Bello or in the centre of Medellín by offering to help them find a taxi, but the drunk usually wound up minus his watch and his money.

They used to like spending the whole night in the street, getting up to mischief: and regarded this as being as normal as being with their families. I asked them, "Didn't your mums say anything? Didn't they punish you when you got home in the morning to sleep?" Hector answered for all of them, "No, they didn't say a thing - especially if we came home with some money."

I asked why they first went on the streets. "We began begging because our friends invited us and it was fun. We got money and used to play around a lot. We looked after one another as far as we could." Others said, "We took to the streets because there was nothing to do at home and the barrio (the shanty-town neighbourhood) was very dangerous and boring."

But not all of them used to beg in Bello or to sleep in the street. Esneider said, "I didn't. I was ashamed to. Anyway, I was afraid of the danger and of the gamines who sniffed glue: and, of course, of the rows with my mother."

All who had spent time in the street said that it had been 'vacano' (great). I asked some of our older children if they would do it again now. Elkin replied, "No, it would be shameful to beg. Besides, to those of us who are big, the only things people would now give for nothing would be bullets."

Fabian said, "In those days we were nuts. We weren't ashamed to go around barefoot and dirty; and we would get into a fight with anyone. We didn't think about anything except the street and our games. Now I think about studying and working."

These comments of the youngsters were very different from what they used to think. It is wonderful to see the change in their lives, to know that they now realise that there are people who are concerned about them.

One of the best indicators of the effectiveness of Irene's work is that the youngsters are now beginning to make plans for their future. With the help of the Foundation they can dare hope to have a future worth planning.

One Man's Pilgrimage

Stephen Lambert describes his 180-mile sponsored walk with a difference

I walked from the Cotswold village of Chastleton to Walsingham to raise money for a sporting organisation, of which I'm a trustee, and two charities including Let The Children Live! - very appropriate with their Walsingham base.

Most medieval pilgrims had horses or mules to carry their baggage. I took the soft option, and kind hosts did a shuttle service with over night gear and dog food (my companion was my labrador bitch, Muffin).

We sent upwards of 2000 mailshots out. Letters and cheques flowed: at the peak 50 letters a day. (I promised to return half of each donation if I failed to complete the course!) The first two days worked perfectly; paths and tracks led me under motorways and over railway and river bridges. But on day three, I reached the outskirts of Northampton. What had happened to bridle paths? Though my map was the latest, industrial buildings spawned where pasture was indicated. How was I to avoid getting lost, or having to go miles round? I played safe, and clung to the Grand Union canal and a disused railway line to get past the city. I trudged past a signal box, confident it hadn't been occupied since Dr. Beeching's day "Where do you think you're going? This is Ministry of Defence land! Leave at once!" I fled, aware that I looked a security threat, and expecting police pursuit.

The quickest way back looked to be a 2 mile long concrete road along which lorries passed incessantly. Frustration loomed once more: at the end was a security fence, and a concrete works! I had to do something drastic. I crept into the ditch, along the outside the fence, and fought through brambles for about a mile, (towed by the dog whose interest in rabbit life kept us to our required 3.5 m.p.h.), until we reached a fence over which was freedom.

The walk along the dyke from Whittlesea to Guyhirn was 10 miles of grass and isolation. Apart from a fisherman or two, there was nobody to be seen or heard, except birds. So rarely does this happen in our lives today, that when it does it is first threatening, and then wonderful.

The last day, which brought me to Walsingham, dawned frosty and clear. Norfolk was at its best. I felt the silent presence of thousands who trod the same paths between the 11th and 15th centuries, making for the same destination. Light was starting to fade as I arrived at the Slipper Chapel. As I prepared to remove my boots to preserve the time honoured tradition of treading barefoot the last mile, out jumped Tom, the photographer, on behalf of Let the Children Live!

At the Shrine, journey over, Pilgrim and dog (the latter who had, after all, completed the whole pilgrimage barefoot) are welcomed. So many mini incidents: too many to record. The pilgrimage raised £16,000 in all, thanks to the unbelievable generosity of 556 people. But I am the fortunate one: it was a wonderful journey, and I would gladly repeat it.

Fr Stephen's walk resulted in £4,000 being donated to Let The Children Live!

Hairless!

Was it his wife, Ann, who first suggested that Richard Dobles' head should be shaved during Battle Abbey's Summer Fete this year? Six months beforehand he readily agreed. Richard was keen to support our work. Sponsors included people from Scotland, Bromley and Farnborough Hospitals, and the Old Rectory (House of Healing) Crowhurst. Brewers, Richard's employers generously agreed to match whatever sponsorship money raised. The event was serenaded by - you've guessed it - a Barber's Shop septet. Off came the hair and in came the money - £2045 in all!

And in Colombia...

The Bishops' Message

Let The Children Live! welcomed the following statement which appeared in the Final Message from the Catholic Bishops of North and South America assembled for the Synod of the Americas in Rome in December 1997.

"We turn with heavy hearts to the bitter hardships borne by you, the children of the streets. What you, the children of God suffer, should happen to no-one. Sometimes you may not even realise that you are abandoned, abused, exploited, and entangled in a life of crime. Some of you are even living under the threat of murder, by those who should shield you from harm. We call on people of good will to help rescue you from these dangers, so you may enjoy a secure and normal life and discover the presence of God's love. We remember the words of Jesus, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me."