Statements from the Community

On this post I’ll once again stop boring you with lots of text and I’ll try to bring you closer to the community sharing two videos with the testimony of the true actors on this wonderful story called Comunidad de Niños “La Sagrada Familia” (Sacred Family Children’s Community). The first video shows Miguel Rodriguez, founder and director of the community, commenting on the origin and development of the project as well as showing some of the people that help this community; on the second video you’ll see the children commenting on their own experience inside the community as well as their future expectations.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to caption it in English so you’ll have to improve your Spanish or just get the general idea out of them.

I’ll leave you the first one and, as Miguel says on the video “…this is a story of victory rather than defeat. A victory for all of us is making this children live, let them smile and eat tomorrow and let no one prevent us from doing this. Let no one prevent the children of saying Yes to hope…”

Now the second video and the true wishes of these children…

Let’s help giving them the “fishing pole” instead of the “fish”. With your donation we can make this project sustainable in the future and also make it possible for them to keep supporting children as the ones you just saw on the video. Their future is in our hands…

Our goal: their future

Stories from the inside (2)

As I commented on a previous post, there are lots of stories inside the community and with this post I’ll comment on a few more.

The Origin

This great solidarity work started after a regrettable event. Miguel Rodriguez, founder of the community, suffers the loss of his third son, only four months old. This event changed his whole life perspective.

Miguel, although he had just lost his third son, realized that around him were many other children, most of them living in the streets, that could be saved from the suffering of starvation, give them shelter and protect them from the weather. He then decided he would not allow any other kid to die like his own and directed all his energy towards helping the children in the streets.

At first he managed to combine his job as a news director with his job feeding, healing and sheltering the children of the street, but soon the latter became his sole dedication. He left his job and moved to a piece of land donated in the desert (in the location of Ventanilla, in the outskirts of Lima). He did this along with his wife, his two remaining biological kids and 50 of his “street children”.

Little by little and with a great effort he started making possible the building of the first humble rooms for the children as well as the first shops that would allow, besides teaching them an occupation, the generation of some income for the daily support of the community. The first shop created was dedicated to pastry making and birthday cakes. These days were critical and in some cases they had to work all day long to have enough cakes to sell on the streets and generate enough for the food of the day.

In 1988 they organize as a non-profit organization and name themselves as Comunidad de Niños La Sagrada Familia (trasnlated as The Sacred Family Children’s Community) and since then they have been helping thousands of children to grow up and become a positive influence on today’s peruvian society.

Overcoming adversity

She is Sonia, has 19 years old and lives in the community since she was 12. She arrived when the police brought her out of the streets after having escaped from her house in Cusco. Her father abandoned them when she was only 3 and her alcoholic mother wasn’t able to take care of her so she decided to come to Lima on her own. Today, after 7 years living in the community, she’s a university student, speaks perfect english, hopes to finish her administration career and start producing in the society. In her own words, the community has changed her live and has given her new reasons to be a better person and think in the future.

Stories like this one are possible thanks to the aid of the community, all the people volunteering and working in it and the many more that anonymously support them. Be a part of this, help the community!

The story of Alberto is another one of the many existing and it’s a good example of the goodness this community does on the children’s life. He was found on the streets with a sprained elbow supported by an improvised sling provided by his street friends. At a very short age, only 7, he was forced by his own father to go in the streets and sell candy. He sang and sold candy on buses while he improvised music with seashells. One day that he was very hungry he made the “huge mistake” of eating the daily share of candy instead of selling it so he wasn’t able to bring back home his daily share of money. This was enough to unleash his father’s fury and twist his arm until his elbow was sprained, along with some other blows and hits. After this, he decided to leave his house and preferred the streets. He was lucky enough to be found after only a few days, his wounds were taken care of and he was taken to the community. He was hosted for more than 10 years and although today he has already left the community, he’s now a young university student struggling to keep up his grades and maintain the scholarship he obtained.

Let us help children like Alberto that from a young age struggle and fight to get ahead despite the many obstacles life has placed on their path.

This young woman is 22 years old and arrived to the community when she was only 11. Her childhood was traumatic. Forced to go out and sell candy she returned home every day only to be raped by her own father since she was 8. At age 11 she was rescued by the community and since then she lives there with the “approval” of her father. She even went a few years after and rescued her sister so now they both live in the community. Luisa is about to finish her career in tourism and she is an official and registered English translator thanks to the support of the many foreign volunteers that come to help in the community.

On the words of Miguel, founder and director of the community, she’s a very smart girl and might even be the future director of the shelter, something that she’d love to do in the future.

We can also be a part of these stories. Stories filled with hope and success against adversity for thousands of other kids. Let’s make success stories like Sonia’s, Alberto’s or Luisa’s become not an exception but, hopefully, a more common one.


Despite not being able to be physically present on the community, we can all help out from home donating for them and making sure this noble deed continues and grows even larger in the years to come.



Our goal: their future











* The real names and pictures of the persons the stories talk about have been changed to preserve confidentiality

Ironman details

The Ironman is the most demanding competition in Triathlon and, as I must have already commented on a previous post, it consists of 2.4 miles of swimming in open waters, 112 miles of biking and a full 26.2 miles marathon. The race has a maximum time limit of 17 hours, a historic average of approximately 12 hours and the actual record is 8:04:08. The starting time is always at 7:00am with a maximum arrival time at 00:00 hours.

Origin

The Ironman was originated in 1978 when an astronaut, John Collins, trying to settle the argument of which athletes were more complete proposed to combine three existing races into one, all at once. The winner of this new race would be considered an “Ironman”. The first editions of this race, that today is one of the most spectacular sport challenges faced by the human race, were held in Waikiki but then they were moved to Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island.

The Ironman World Championship takes place in Hawaii every year but many other Ironman races are organized as qualifying sessions for this World Championship. To date, in 2009, about 21 Ironman races take place in different countries in the world such as Australia, Canada, Spain, United States, Southafrica, China, Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Brazil, among others. All the Ironman races are regulated by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC). The only Ironman held in Latinamerica is Brazil which I will be attending.

Ironman today

Many people consider this sport as the most difficult sport in world sport history. It is a very demanding race that drives participants to the edge of their physical as well as mental endurance. Although some thousand athletes compete on an Ironman race throughout each year, most of them just run to beat an specific time as a personal challenge or just to be able to cross that finish line even though it takes as long as the 17 hour time limit to do it (this is clearly my case!).

Some additional information

World population is estimated today at about 6,700 millions. A very rough calculation based on the number of Ironman competitions that have been held in the 30 years of the race’s creation shows that, in the whole world, there are less tan 50,000 persons that have crossed the finish line of one of them (source http://www.escueladetriatlon.com.ar/). This represents less than 0.0007% of the world’s population or, in simpler words, one out of every 135,000 persons have crossed this line.

In Peru, Ironman finishers, as are called the ones that are able to complete an Ironman competition, account for less than 50 persons. Being such a small group I’ll probably write their names on a later post for everyone of them deserves being mentioned. These figures show that one out of every 580,000 peruvians have crossed the finish line. I’m not sure if the statistics are encouraging or not but they surely show how hard the challenge is.

It is common to hear from the ones than have a little experience in an Ironman that the competition is 30% physical and 70% mental. They also say that the ugly part is the previous hard training and that the race day, despite the acute pain, the cramps and the willingness to quit at each additional step, feels like a celebration.

Finally, you also hear that once you cross that finish line your live is changed forever. You’ll never be the same. Discover yourself, know your limits and overcome them is what really makes you an Ironman.

Let’s hope they´re right!

I’ll leave you with a motivational video reel of the competition so you can have a brief idea of the race day atmosphere and the effort required to finish one of these races:

I would also like to share with you a couple more videos. The first one is from 1982 and shows how a professional athlete managed to cross the finish line.

I have saved the best one for the last. A truly inspiring story for anyone, whether you want to participate on an Ironman or not. Stories like this one makes us realize that anything is possible and that if we try hard enough we can accomplish anything we want.

I am determined to help the children of this community and as of today, many others have jumped in. Join us and help us help them. It’s in our hands to give this children a decent future.


Our goal: their future

Stories from the inside

Each one of us must have many stories to tell, imagine for a moment the number of existing stories inside a community where more than 700 children live today, thousands of children have been living there for the last 17 years and they live on a day by day basis counting on voluntary donations. As you must have guessed, there are a lot and the idea of this post is to tell you, briefly, some of them.

Arrivals and the beginning of a new life

Let me introduce you to Joel. He arrived to the community after just a few days of his birth thanks to a police officer that found him abandoned in the street. He was found completely naked, no clothes or even diapers to cover him. Today he is almost 3 years old and even though he doesn’t talk yet, when you play with him it seems the only thing he asks for is love. He likes human contact and it seems that simple thing is good enough to make him feel good. He has no idea why he’s here and when he grows up he’ll surely notice who his family is.

Kids like Joel now have a future thanks to the existence of this community, their support, housing and education. And all these is possible thanks to the unselfish economic support of some people. You could be one of them. You can be an important part of Joel’s future and other kids like him.

These 3 brothers arrived as small children, remembers Miguel, the founder and director of the community. Jordan, “Caparazón” and Renato came from Cusco with their mother seeking for better possibilities in Lima only to find they couldn’t be able to support themselves on their own. They arrived in early January and, as is traditional around that time of the year, breakfast consisted of Christmas cake, instead of bread, and milk. It was the first time they tried Christmas cakes. The following day they had bread and milk for breakfast. On the third day, Miguel noticed they were not eating their share of bread and milk and when he asked why they didn’t hesitate in answering they had already eaten twice that week and three times must, clearly, be a mistake. On their little heads they were expecting their next meal the following week.

Stories like this one happen daily in our country. We could be part of the change and help children like them, and so many others living either in the streets or inside the community, to feel that eating more than twice a week is not unusual. Let’s aid the community on their goal to help more children each time.

Concrete results

Not every story is a sad story inside the community. In fact, their walls and the look in the children’s faces are full of hope in the future and in the example set by others that already left the community and are now successful professionals, young students or parents. There are even more than a couple of marriages between men and women that used to be part of the community.

I may comment you about Ruben, that now at age 28 and after having lived almost his whole childhood and youth in the community, is a successful doctor that is studying his specialty in a foreign country with a scholarship. When he finished med school one of the first things he did was to open a clinic, financed by a spanish NGO. The clinic attends both, the children of the community and the community neighbors and now it’s ran by different doctors while Ruben is away.

We could also talk about Juan, who lived his whole life in the community and now, at age 14, he’s already studying Robotics at the university. He’ll soon travel to Germany to study nuclear engineering thanks to a government scholarship.

As them, there are many very good examples of the communities results based on the education and formation this kid’s and young people receive while they live in the community. We can assure this continues in the future by doing something today.

Contrasts and examples for everyone

Some of the more contrasting thing when you go to the community is the high degree of generosity and the willing to share among the kids, considering the latent needs they have.

I was lucky enough to witness one of this examples on one of my visits. It was lunchtime, everyone was at the canteen and two new kids had just arrived to the community. When they walked in, and after the classic “Good afternoon friends” that all the kids sing along, they started clapping as a sign of welcome to their new family members. Everyone there knew how much they have had to go through to get there, maybe some of them have had harder times than others but what is sure is that no one had an easy life and the clapping might be the way, their way, of saying things will be a little bit better from now on.


Another good example happens from time to time and started a year ago, after an earthquake that destroyed some southern towns. On Saturdays, kids are asked how many of them want to donate their share of bread to those affected by the earthquake. Without counting in detail I’d say than 99.9% of the kids raise their hands when prompted for this. The next day, breakfast is just a ceremony of bread collecting inside sacks that will reach the earthquake victims. That day, they wait for lunch with the satisfaction of having given back a little bit of what they’ve received. At their short age they do understand the beauty of sharing.

We could also do it, just as they do, from time to time.

Our goal: their future