Chiquitines Centro de Adopción

Thanks everyone so much for the birthday wishes!

Today we went to the orphanage for a follow up and a tour. I definitely wanted to see where Alexander was living before we got him but I wasn't really looking forward to this trip because I understand the realities of the situation. The people that work at Chiquitines Centro de Adopción are wonderful caring people doing an excellent job but no child should grow up institutionalized like this.

Here Kristin and Alexander are with the director of the center to Alexander's left, the assistant director to her left and the social worker to Kristin's right.




This is another couple from Sweden that is staying at our hotel. They just arrived at Chiquitines for their follow up meeting as we were about to take the tour.




This is the doctor at the center.




Kristin with one of the volunteers.




The courtyard.



The cafeteria


This was a room filled with five or six toddlers. The image seems smoky because I was taking it through a screen. The kids all seemed content playing except the one in the orange pants. He just stared at us looking as though he was about to cry. When the woman that was volunteering walked into the room two of the kids ran to her and wrapped themselves around her legs. They are so starved for attention and love. This isn't the fault of the workers, there are just too many children. You can see the love in the staff's actions and faces. Many of them came up to Alexander and spoke to him in Spanish, I could pick out the phrases "Mi amor!" (my love) and "Mi precioso" (my precious).


The classroom.

This is one of the bedrooms for the children. Magnolia, who drove us here, pointed out the fact that there were no pictures on the walls. This particular room was for some of the more troubled children. There were no pictures so they wouldn't take them down and hit each other with them.







This little girl grabbed onto Kristin's hand because she wanted to show us her classroom. She gave both of us a half a peanut that she had. When neither of us ate it she very adamantly let us know in Spanish as well as gesturing towards our mouths that she wanted us to eat them which we then did.

A lot of the children asked to have their photo taken and then ran towards us to see themselves on the screen on the back of the camera. They were all trying to talk to us and ask questions which of course were in Spanish and we couldn't understand. The one phrase I did understand was "¿Cómo te llamas" which literally translates to "What are you called?" meaning "What's your name?"

Some of the kids tried some English words on us such as "Hello" or "How are you?" They were so excited to see us, I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was just something different to break up their routine or maybe they thought we were there to take them with us. Magnolia was speaking in Spanish to a couple of them and got visibly choked up by what they were saying. I was on the verge of tears the whole time so I didn't ask.




If anyone that is reading this would like to help the orphanage out they always need clothes, books (in Spanish of course), classroom supplies like pencils, paper, crayons etc. Anything that children from 0-12 years old would need would be greatly appreciated.

The address is:

Calle 22 # 126-54 Avenida El Banco
Pance, Cali, Colombia

Money is also needed for all the different programs, you can find out how to donate at http://www.chiquitinescali.com/english-version/suport-us.html.

If you have questions the director speaks English as do some of the other staff members. You can fill out the form on the Contact Us link on their website. It is written in Spanish but it should be simple enough to use something like Google Translate to figure it out.