The girl from the states and I had a long conversations. Her parents in the states screen her calls. She talked with me for a long time and I learned more from her than I ever could have from the places I visited and worked and welcomed me back after the year-end holiday. She was thinking a little home. She now has four large buildings and serves 600 meals a day. She invited me to come and see her facilities but the kids aren’t there.
I assumed a lot of things from previous working at them and working in the streets that aren’t like I thought or perhaps changed. There are two main paths, the government-funded path and the private path. Every one I’ve visited in worked for in the path chose the private path, although I have also seen the kids at a public one and pictures of of them too on this web site. There are two main issues with public. #1, while they pay, they run the show and you have no choice with regard to the kids nor how it is run. #2, It is politically driven, which means if you are on the wrong side of the fence politically and/or the contact doesn’t like you for any reason, they simply withdraw your funding and pass the kids to who supports their positions. Now I understand why the ones I spent time and worked at are private. What was astounding was over the year-end holidays, they send the kids back to whomever they are linked to which could be either with grandma, parents if they are not in prison, or relative in a shack or under a tarp in a park. When you are private, you can pick the kids and parents. She told me about staffing and requirements before you get 1-3 children. There are nutritionist, social worker, accountant, and the list goes on. She talked about overtime pay, holiday pay, working after 7 pm pay, etc. It was discouraging, in fact impossible, in fact YWAM who I visited before and had a large dorm-like brick buildings moved out. Then I thought, wait, I’ve had many impossible things and signs happen in my life already where God hit it out of the park. I refuse to be one of the 10 spies. She also gave me many avenues, so much so that I have a lot of things to organize before I can even evaluate the best path which itself will require prayer so I don’t rely on my own human wisdom. I asked about adoption. She said adoption in Colombia is not difficult other than some lawyer fees. She said same sex couples can adopt. She said when it goes international it gets much more expensive. She said the older kids nobody wants because they have lived on the streets for a long time, will listen to nobody, have no honor, and want to live on the streets. However, kids age out of homes too. With no skills, it can be prostitution and the boys anything else. Maybe before that happens I can set up some kind of student exchange. English is a big advantage. I’m just talking and have no idea what is involved but I have people to bounce that off here. I remember Jaime Jaramillo of Ninos de los Andes talking to other countries and saying, “What I need is jobs…” It makes perfect sense.