The theme of love is one that´s been talked about pretty frequently during our orientation here (and which, as you can probably imagine, I think is super awesome).
It began with a talk with the director here my first day here. He spoke about how the mission of NPH (Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, the overarching organization) is to provide love and guidance for the kids that come here, who either have no parents, or their parents (or extended family, in a lot of cases) are economically unable to take care of them. This means that many of them come from poor backgrounds, but also many of the other issues that come into the cycle of poverty: hunger, abuse (both sexual and emotional), parents with addictions or depression-- overall, an extreme lack of support and care for them. Thus, the job of the ranch is to help all of these kids not only by providing food and shelter, but also helping them to feel valuable and loved, and to provide support and guidance, so to help them be content human beings and become part of society. Whether that happens in all aspects of the ranch is a different story, for many different reasons, but I like that goal.
We also had a charla (chat) with the man in charge of the kids who do service years here at the ranch before going on to high school or university. He was the kind of guy who just clearly had his heart in the right place, and everything he said was about supporting and helping the kids. Among many amazing things, he said two things that I thought to write down: one is a cool phrasing about helping the kids to turn their mistakes into experiences (What do you have to do to turn a mistake into an experience? Process it and proceed forward?).
The other is a wonderful quote that I´ll leave you with: ¨Como seres humanos, nosotros todos tenemos el derecho de equivocarnos¨ (As human beings, we all have the right to make mistakes).
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