AWCH Kinder von Cali Project

How could I be afraid to go to Colombia for three weeks, when Jil, my 23-year-old daughter, could work there for three months? Thus, I gathered my courage and, fortified by Jil's example, boarded Lufthansa for Cali, Colombia's third largest city with over two million inhabitants.

Members of the AWC of Hamburg, in response to my one small E-mail request, donated an avalanche of money, toys, and clothing, so that I spent the week prior driving around Hamburg, picking up the donations. There was a specific request for medical suture material. Friends helped me to make the contact to Ethicon/Norderstedt and they donated suture material worth 20.000 DM.

Collecting donations is one thing, but transporting them to Central America is another. Thanks to my husband's secretary, Frau Venske, who contacted Lufthansa, charges for overweight luggage were waived. Lufthansa said, "We can transport your stuff from Hamburg to Bogota. You figure out how to get it through customs and on to Cali." That too, was easier than expected in the end.

On July 5, Father Alfredo met me at the airport in his pick-up truck and we drove 30 kilometers through Cali, in the southwestern part of the country. Several children accompanied us, as a group of children was less likely to be attacked than an adult alone. We entered Aquablanca, a slum with 600,000 inhabitants and then El Retiro, an area too dangerous for any taxi driver. People were sitting in front of their corrugated metal, cardboard or wooden huts in front of small fires, listening to Salsa music. During the hot night I heard shots. At five the next morning hundreds of children were yelling in the playground and a typical day at "The Children of Cali" began.

This is a large compound consisting of a nursery school, two schools from grades 1-11, and a business high school. There are 500 children in preschool alone, with 9000 students over all. Classes are large: "better too many children in class than on the streets," is the slogan. This year 400 proud students graduated after 11th grade. Within the complex there are jobs for 400 women, who are happy for the chance to work near their children and to pay a small school fee from their salaries. In cottage industries they sew school uniforms and cobble shoes. They bake and cook, turning out 2500 meals a day. Children who cannot afford the school come anyway, carrying empty containers to fetch lunch. The women clean the rooms, and assist in the kindergarten. They make jewelry, mattresses, and brooms. They have a carpentry shop where coffins are turned out in large numbers.

The children are not orphans; they live at home. The women have sole responsibility as the men have either never recognized their paternity, or they have disappeared to work in the fields far from the city, deal in cocaine, serve prison terms, or have died from gun shot wounds. The one-room huts have no electricity and often no running water. The children are left to themselves as the women seek work. As a result, the children arrive in the compound early, often young ones dragging even younger siblings along. They stay very late until their mothers are available.

There are 40 youth groups of 20-30 children in each group. The goal is to offer something to replace the daily violence. Thus, the young people get homework supervision, play soccer, and learn about birth control and the dangers of drugs.

The women also work in the clinic and learn to be nurses and in this field my daughter Jil was welcomed as an ergo-therapist, a kind of physical therapist. Due to the poverty and miserable hygienic conditions, the children need good medical care. Many are spastic or epileptic due to lack of oxygen during a birth with no aid of any kind. Children are retarded or paralyzed from the waist down. I saw that up to four children, many severely handicapped shared hospital beds. They lie there without diapers on wet mattresses.

German doctors from "Physicians for the Third World" volunteer their skills, although Colombian bureaucracy often hinders any kind of help. This organization's Frankfurt office provided me with a certificate in Spanish, saying that I represented a humanitarian organization and was not providing supplies for international terrorists, in order to get our donations through customs.

The founder, Father Alfredo, is 62-year-old Alfred Welker from Germany. A Catholic priest, he studied in Bamberg, before going to Colombia in 1981. Upon his arrival, he found a small chapel built by his Belgian predecessor who had been murdered. With no money and little command of Spanish he began teaching three students, drying out a marshland and building canalization. The purpose was to fight violence with education. In spite of personal danger (he has escaped assassination six times), he aims to give children the tools to help themselves and each other.

Obviously, I am deeply impressed with this project. I am making long-term plans to distribute information, start a non-profit Verein and even learn Spanish. I am especially happy that the AWC of Hamburg has nominated this project for a FAWCO Relief and Development Award, the winners to be announced at the FAWCO conference in Florence, March 2002. [Webeditor's Note: The Children of Cali Project was awarded a $5000 grant in March of 2002.] I will do my best to represent you in Cali, making personally sure that each donation goes directly to the recipients. DM 300 pays a teacher's monthly salary; food for one child is DM 38,40 a year; a kindergarten spot is DM 16 annually.

In order to fundamentally improve living conditions in Third World countries, young people, and especially girls, must be given a better education. The most effective aid is always support that helps people become self-sufficient. Most important is good schooling and job training. For example, in Namibia it could be shown that learning to read and write was the best way to fight unemployment. School is the way to freedom. That is why our work starts here and includes:

financing kindergartens and schools,

supporting work with youth groups, and

employee training

A clinic has also been operated for several years by the organization "Committee of Doctors for the Third World". German doctors and dentists volunteer their services here. Sometimes physical and occupational therapists also come here to work with handicapped children and train native clinic employees. We help out here with:

special baby food for premature babies,

financial support for the volunteer therapists,

aid to family planning projects, and

financing of special medical services and organizing of needed medical materials and instruments