New Partnership in Peru
We are excited to share that this past month, Paths of Hope has formalized a partnership agreement with Health Bridges International (HBI) to work with children's homes and their graduates in Peru.
Based in Portland, Oregon, HBI has been working with underserved communities in Peru for over 20 years. The HBI team facilitates sustainable improvements in health and wellbeing through advocacy, collaboration, and service.
Paths of Hope and HBI have come together to create two new programs to serve children's homes and their graduates.
First, we are collaborating on the development of a Center of Excellence Program that will be implemented in the Girasoles homes for abandoned and at-risk boys in Ica and the Sacred Valley. The goal is to build a model program to serve as a roadmap for advancing evidence-based practices in meeting the cognitive, emotional, social and spiritual needs of at-risk children and youth. We will train staff at the homes to view their work with the children through the lens of “trauma informed care” so they will be able to relate to the child as a whole person - taking into account past trauma and the resulting coping mechanisms when attempting to understand their behaviors. By refocusing how the staff relates to the children in the homes, we hope to guide these young men on a healthy path in their emotional development and to develop protective factors into their lives in order to foster long term resilience.
We continue to build networks with local churches and other community organizations that are connected to the boys’ homes as we work to develop a trauma-informed community of mentors, volunteers, staff, etc. who can serve as a social support network for the children in the home and beyond.
Second, Paths of Hope and HBI are collaborating on the Tigre Program, which is designed to walk alongside children’s home graduates as they transition into adulthood and begin to identify the path God has opened before them. We are developing a peer mentoring curriculum, in which some of the older ex-Girasoles can be trained to walk with young men who have aged out of the home or alongside some of the boys who will be soon making the transition out of the home. Our goal is to empower these peer mentors to be able to connect the Tigre Program participants to resources that they need, to walk with them as they develop life goals and move toward them, and to connect with each other relationally as they work to build necessary social support.
Prayer Requests:
We so appreciate your continued prayers and support for these new initiatives.
Please pray for our new partnership with HBI, that the Lord would accomplish His purposes through these new programs in the lives of these boys.
Join us in prayer that this project would bear fruit in the lives of the boys and teenagers who currently live in the homes as well as their generations that will follow.
In both projects, we are currently in the middle of the curriculum development phase. Pray for this process.
Pray for the staff in the homes as they commit to learning and applying this new material.
Pray for our first peer mentor in the Tigre Program, as we mentor and train him.
Sacred Valley Girasoles home
Young men in the Sacred Valley receive guidance and support as they age out of the boys home.
