Kinderhilfe
A club introduces itself
Through personal educational sponsorships, we enable over a hundred children, mainly girls, in several cities in Colombia to attend secondary school and often to continue their education, mostly in the social sector. Fewer and fewer parents are able to do this financially, and without our help the living conditions of these children are catastrophic and hopeless. Therefore, the sponsored children are grouped together and given comprehensive care, guidance and support.
With the 30 euros that the sponsors pay monthly, a child in Colombia can just about cover the costs (school uniforms, textbooks, exercise books, pens, trips and travel expenses) for attending secondary school. The association covers other costs in the event of illness and individual emergencies. In addition to the financial help from the sponsors in Germany, personal contact is very important in order to continually encourage the children, to share in their problems, which are unimaginable for us, and to continually reinforce in them that education is the only way out of hopelessness. The exhausted and resigned mothers are less and less able to do this and often expect support and help from their growing children themselves when their husbands have left them alone with the responsibility in misery.Through our project sponsorships, we support neglected and particularly vulnerable children, often saving them from a terrible end on the streets.In Medellin, we look after children from one of the most dangerous and violent slums during the day, send them to school and try to help them overcome the trauma they experienced in the street fighting during the civil war.In Popayan, the headquarters of our association in Colombia, we can help children of all ages through various projects. Since small children in the slums are particularly at risk, especially when their mothers cannot look after them because they have to work from dawn until night, we can help particularly effectively with our daycare for preschool children. Even though most young children are already severely damaged by malnutrition, violence and neglect, good nutrition, loving care and constant security work wonders.
Most of the children who leave the nursery and go to primary school with the help of the association continue to be looked after by the Hope for Children Without a Future project. They have the great privilege of not having to work like many of their peers, but of being able to play under loving supervision and develop into critical and social young people.
Once they have finished primary school after five years, we can continue to support them, even if they do not have the strength and talent to successfully attend secondary school. In our bakery, young people are given practical and theoretical training and their weak self-esteem is strengthened through work. They supply all of the association's groups and the most needy families with fresh bread every day, are looked after throughout the day and receive a small financial reward. The tailoring shop is also a double help for the girls and women who are being trained and for the association's families who benefit from their work.
Since we built the school for Indian children in San Jose del Guayabal in 1995, it has become an increasingly fascinating project. We now not only supply the school with all the materials and pay teachers' salaries, but also run a canteen for the chronically hungry children, take care of the school garden and all the social care for this small community. The school has become a social center in which parents are gradually losing their mistrust of white people and are accepting advice and help and, above all, are actively participating.
A particularly current project, which again arose out of extreme necessity, is run exclusively by young people who grew up in the association:
In one of the many refugee camps that are growing in Popayan, as in all major cities in Colombia, one of our sponsored children has set up a care center for children who are even more abandoned by the world than the poor children on the streets of the slums. The families who had to flee from the civil war and violence or who were displaced come to the cities with only what they are wearing, where they settle on the outskirts of the existing slums. They build their miserable shelters out of waste material and wander the streets all day looking for work just to be able to buy something to eat for themselves and the children. A permanent group of 70 children has formed here, who can play, sing, read and, above all, eat once a week. Some of our older sponsored children regularly help with the care. With the help of the association, many of these children were able to be enrolled in school for the first time. The health care provided by our medical professionals to the sponsored children is particularly important here.
http://www.kinderhilfe-kolumbien.de/