What does finding a home mean for abandoned boys?
Our Comunidad Girasoles program provides safe places for formerly abandoned boys (ages 3-18) in Arequipa and the Sacred Valley of Cusco. As soon as a child enters, they find a space where safety, healing, and new beginnings are possible. In addition to meeting their basic needs, they access self-development services and learn foundational skills that support them in actively shaping their future.
Our team of administrators, teachers, psychologists, social workers, cooks, and support personnel provides a stable home setting that nurtures children’s overall well-being. Through integrating physical, intellectual, and emotional development, children steadily move towards self-sufficiency and autonomy. The homes provide baselines for our Center of Excellence, which offers technical assistance to NGOs, government agencies, and programs in the child welfare sector.
The Casa Girasoles Urubamba (Cusco) and the Aldea Infantil Sagrada Familia (Arequipa) provide formerly abandoned boys (ages 3-18) in Ica and Cusco, Perú, with safe housing and a stable home setting that nurtures their overall well-being. The two homes currently support over 60 boys, focusing on their physical, intellectual, and emotional development and preparing them for self-sufficiency and autonomy. The homes provide baselines for HBI’s Communities of Excellence research study, which aims to offer technical assistance and training on evidence-based strategies to NGOs, government agencies, and health and child welfare programs.
HBI’s Casa Girasoles aims for better life outcomes such as holistic health, heightened resilience, relevant life skills, and stable housing for formerly abandoned boys in Perú. Through the homes, these boys access food, shelter, primary education, and personalized medical and self-development services managed by physicians, psychologists, social workers, and teachers. They build their foundational life skills during their stay, enabling them to actively learn how to shape their futures.=
To create systemic change in Perú’s childcare, Casa Girasoles is the incubator for HBI’s Community of Excellence (CoE) model for child welfare. This model is community-driven, collaborative, and replicable. It focuses on self-advocacy for children and training for care providers. It aims to systematize and deepen evidence-based care to ensure that each child receives quality and holistic care.
Impact
Intellectual, emotional, and social development for children through integrated health and well-being programs
Youth and young adults develop “whole person” life skills as they are supported with the aid of our online monitoring and evaluation tool.
Using Montessori inquiry-based learning principles, the Casa serves as a model learning lab for other centers.
Meet Juancito.
Juancito* is a playful boy who likes helping others. The Casa Girasoles staff love his infectious energy and eagerness to help sweep, mop, and clean the home, even if it takes him a little longer than the older boys.
But this wasn’t always the case. When Juancito was introduced to HBI by child protective services, he was in crisis. He had left his mother and grandmother, who could not feed or take care of him on top of their other young children. At age 8, Juancito was wandering the city’s outskirts, where child protective services found him.
In December 2019, Juancito was welcomed into Casa Girasoles for temporary shelter.
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When Perú closed onsite classes due to the pandemic, Juancito and other kids with learning challenges needed support adapting to online school. With a learning consultant, Casa Girasoles redesigned its education program into a Montessori-inspired, inquiry-based learning model. The home, through the support of donors, also purchased computers and technical equipment the boys can use to learn and create. The effect? The boys took ownership of their learning, even setting up a “Mayor of Girasoles” activity – complete with candidates campaigning and debating on political platforms – to better understand Perú’s government system. Juancito loved his time as a campaigner, and his candidate won as “Mayor of Girasoles.”
Juancito’s story reflects the stories of many children in Casa Girasoles, all made possible through the big hearts of HBI’s donors. Under the care of stable and trustworthy adults, and with personalized medical, social-emotional, and educational support, boys like Juancito are building a life of learning, confidence, resilience, and agency to pursue the future they deserve.
*Names changed to maintain privacy.
What’s Ahead
Focusing on children as capable and creative persons, we’re actively improving our holistic services to support “whole child” development. We aim to create more streamlined care transition plans to build a Center of Excellence model that can be scaled anywhere in the world.
Have questions about Casa Girasoles?
Please get in touch with Srta. Lidia: lidia@hbint.org
