Make a Colombian Child Happy

Hello all family, friends, and strangers! For those of you who don´t know me, my name is Juan Alba, and I attend Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, California. Every Summer break, I have the opportunity to travel back to my homeland in Bucaramanga, Colombia, where I lived for the first 10 years of my life. However, for my last trip to Colombia before graduating High School, I felt it was my obligation to help poor Colombian children as a way to show an appreciation for my education and the opportunities I have in the States. 

Moreover, I went online and contacted various local charities about becoming an English teacher volunteer, but it was only Fundestar that welcomed me with open arms. Fundestar, founded in 1986, is a government-run charity that runs various shelters throughtout the region to offer help to mothers and their children. However, since many women live far away from the shelter, they have to walk in the hot dirt roads for an average of 40 minutes in order to arrive. 

For the past month, I have been traveling to Fundestar´s shelter in a dirt road town called Acapulco. There, I spend time with the children, teaching them English through activities and games, while their mothers receive advice from a psychologist or pick up a bag of groceries for their home. My time there teaching the children has been extremely compensating, but at the same time, I see that the shelter lacks supplies for the children, such as paint, toys, and books. I have to admit, the shelter does have some toys, but most of them are old plastic figures of stars, crosses, and circles. 

Why should you donate? the children in these shelters, such as the one in Acapulco, have to live very difficult lives in their poverty-stricken homes and many of them do not have toys to play with. Not only are children the future of our world, but most of their growth and personality is conceived in the first five years of their lives. With the funds collected from this campaign, I will use 100% of them to buy new cool toys and make the kids more excited about coming to the shelter. Please consider scraping together a few bucks and donating to this cause, even if it is just one dollar. Another thing to keep in mind is that since the price of dollars in Colombian Pesos is at an all-time high, even donating a single dollar can buy the children a toy. 

For more information about Fundestar 
Thanks so much! Juan Alba