Brad Hamilton Photography

Projects: A SAFE PLACE

Bogotá, Colombia

Asociación Hogares Luz Y Vida (Homes of Light & Life Association) was founded in 1993 by Sister Valeriana Isabel Garcia Martin from Seville, Spain. Originally intended as a home for blind children, it quickly became a refuge for children with a variety of physical, mental, and social needs. Today, Luz Y Vida provides, food, shelter, and education for over a thousand children in various parts of Colombia.

"The Prevention Program teaches children social skills, anger management, good values, and self esteem so that they feel they have options and can transform their lives. If we are able to achieve this with most of them, maybe we'll be able to save one generation."Marta Janette Luna, Prevention Program Coordinator
   
"I opened the Home with the idea that it would be for blind children only, but then a little girl arrived with cigarette burns all over her body. She was only a month and a half old. The doctors said, 'She's not going to make it,' but I held her hand and I told her, 'Rosita, we're going to fight for your life, you and me.' Today we see her, a seventeen-year old, still with her limitations, but she's a happy person, full of life. She is the one that gave me the idea of opening up the Home to other kids."Sister Valeriana, Director and Founder
   
Caqueza is a town of 8,000 located seventeen miles southeast of Bogotá. A day care program has been established in a former girl's school to provide food and education for 230 local children, in addition to beds for abandoned and special needs kids.
     
  
"When people come here and say, 'There is something here...we don't know what it is, but there is something about this place,' I think, yes, there are angels here."Sister Valeriana, Director and Founder
   
"Colombian public schools are not handicap accessible and lack programs for special needs students. Integrating 'typical' children with special needs children in an environment of teamwork and family is the main goal of all programs affiliated with the organization."Colleen Morey, Volunteer Coordinator, Connecticut
   
Nixa and her older sister Nuri both share a rare inherited skin disease known as epidermolysis bullosa. They get up at 4am every day to bathe and dress each other's skin with ointments and plastic wrapping. Teenagers now, they prefer doing this ritual themselves rather than with a nurse's help. They have lived at Luz Y Vida since infancy.
     
  
The heart of the Association and the main residential facility is known simply as El Hogar (The Home). Currently one hundred and forty children live there.
   
Children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities receive physical therapy daily. This gentle bending of the torso and neck helps to improve their range of motion and keep things moving that might atrophy without this daily stimulus.
   
A young student receives instruction at the Juan Garcia School located in the La Maria section of Southern Bogotá. In 1996, after witnessing children robbing children in the area, Sister Valeriana sought to establish the school as an alternative to what she was seeing in the streets.
     
  
A former coffee plantation about two hours from Bogotá, La Finca (The Farm) was purchased with the help of donations from Europe. Children who show less aptitude in the classroom can live at La Finca and learn farming skills while helping to provide food to the Association's other programs.
   
Vale Rosita, named after Sister Valeriana's adopted daughter, is a day care program in another of southern Bogota's poorest neighborhoods.
   
Leidy Bermudez (second from left) was raised at El Hogar and joined the nursing staff there after receiving her formal training. In reality, she was already well-versed in many of her duties before nursing school as all of the children are taught to help with their disabled brothers and sisters from an early age.
     
  
Two fish ponds were constructed at La Finca. Once the fish are mature, the water level is dropped and the children scoop up the fish in buckets or by hand.
   
"The orphanage is run with very few words it seems to me. Things are known, but I'm never really sure when they're taught or when the communication takes place. There's an understanding of how things operate, and I don't mean operate in a business sense. I mean in the sense of how we treat each other. It's an operation from the heart. And that's why it's done with so few words. Because they don't need words for that."Colleen Morey, Volunteer Coordinator, Connecticut
   
After years of red tape with Bogota's Secretary of Education and the city's Urban Planning Department, the Association was finally given permission to proceed with its dreams for an elementary school. Special needs children who had been denied access to the local public schools would now be integrated into the classroom.
     
  
"When people ask me what we need I say lots of love. People can live with very few things but they cannot live without love. Love is essential."Sister Valeriana, Director and Founder
   
A nurse clips the toenails of a young girl before bedtime. Asleep by 8pm, the children rise at 5:30am to shower, dress, and eat before leaving for school at 8am.
   
"My father, on his deathbed, said to me, 'You go back to Colombia and fight for the poorest, for the ones with the greatest need.' And I really think he would be happy to see that I am accomplishing what he wanted his daughter to do. I think I can say I have accomplished that...or at least I am working on it."Sister Valeriana, Director and Founder