Empowerment – wayne centrone

Our work has changed so much over the nearly 30-years of our existence.

What started with a strong focus on medical outreach has morphed into a full fledged NGO that seeks to provide vulnerable Peruvian children and their families with opportunities toward a life built on health, hope, home, and purpose.

With our Communities of Excellence (CoE) model, we work with nonprofit, government, and private organizations to standardize services and programs on a national scale to ensure that children and families living in poverty have access to the quality caregiving and medical treatment they deserve. The CoEs are community-driven, collaborative, and replicable program models focusing on self-advocacy for children and families and training for childcare providers.

As we made the shift from an organization focused on direct services delivery – although we still have the privilege of serving nearly 60 children in our Casa Girasoles Programs – to an organization that seeks to build models that can be scaled in a variety of cultural and geographic settings – HBI has grown from an organization that was U.S. based leadership to an NGO registered in Perú, with Peruvian leaders and Board. We are proud to employ 42 staff members, all but two are Peruvian. We are incredibly proud of this shift. It means that we are an organization seeking to support lasting change for children and families in Perú – through Peruvian leadership!

We are also serious stewards of the funding we receive to do this work. We are committed to make every dollar count to every single youth, every family, every professional we have in the scope of our work.  Over 92% of HBI’s funding goes directly to support our programs and pay our staff.

Why is this so important? Because it represents a shift to a model that empowers in-country change through in-country leadership.

I am so proud of how far we have come. I am even more proud of the amazing leadership and staff we have working everyday to serve the needs of some of the most marginalized children and families in Latin America, in a pathway for long-term, sustainable change.