Westfalia Orphanage
Westfalia is a non-government organisation dedicated to helping children; orphans, victims of family violence and abuse, abandoned, or homeless. Westfalia is essentially a small village situated in the dry, dusty hills of Cieneguilla about 80 minutes from downtown Lima, Peru. It provides housing, education, and psychological assistance to children with serious emotional development problems, who have suffered a state of material and moral abandonment. The orphanage provides an educational system based on a family model which allows the children to interact and maintain close relations with their new family and integrate into society again.
Westfalia receives no money from the Peruvian government and relies on donations and support to operate. The village grows its own fruit and vegetables, has animals for food (pigs and guinea pigs) and for the children’s social development (ducks, llamas and rabbits) and also runs workshops of carpentry, crafts and gardening. These workshops provide skills for the children as well as a means to produce goods for sale to raise funds for the village (shoes, arts and crafts).
Sonrisasenperu.org is sponsoring ongoing english, drama and dance lessons as well as mathematics tutoring to the children.
Check out the projects that Sonrisasenperu.org have been involved with at Westfalia Orpanage
I want to say was a huge thank you to Scott for letting me accompany him to see the wonderful work that is going on. The children are absolutely flourishing in a loving, supportive, creative and educational environment. Every child is cherished and filled with supportive messages and positive codes of conduct and a sense of understanding towards themselves and others. There are so many opportunities for each one to develop their skills and recuperate their well-being and sense of self through animal and plant cultivation, art therapy, foreign language skills, sports and so many more educational activities, conventional and otherwise. There are self-sustaining projects ongoing and I am absolutely humbled by the excellent, thoughtful and insightful work of the whole team involved in the care of these fantastic children. My hopes are that this organization can move to NGO status which it so deserves so it can benefit from further funding input. The work is invaluable and defines what we should actively be working towards in life: the improvement of the lives of children, especially those who have had a difficult start in life. A big thanks again to all of you in this fantastic team, but especially a big thanks to the children.