Team CASA HOGAR / Kolumbien
Padre Eduar (Eduar Mena)
ISTMINA
Profession: Priest of the diocese of Istmina-Tadó
Task at CASA HOGAR: Project coordination on site
From a very young age, I have had to contemplate with pain what I consider to be one of the greatest misfortunes of humanity (the lack of access to education); many men and women in the most remote places of Chocó have not had the possibility of learning to write their name, they don’t even know how to write the letter “A”. Another part of the population finishes their high school studies, but they have no way to continue their education at university.
This reality shows an endless number of unfulfilled dreams, of life projects that will never come true, of people who will never be able to smile with satisfaction, of faces resigned to die in poverty. This chain of misery that is unleashed by the lack of education I cannot tell in detail, as there are too many data that I would have to point out here, and this is not the purpose of this statement.
With CASA HOGAR, I joyfully look at the faces of black and indigenous girls who will not be subjected to abandonment. It is a dream come true, it is the desire to help the progress of Chocó, it is love that takes on a face of its own, it is the desire for redemption. A woman who is educated, is a woman who becomes free, is a people that becomes greater and more human, is a spirit that is ennobled. CASA HOGAR is not just an association, it is faces that love and feel loved. I see happy girls, I see families progressing, I see faces beaming with joy, I see dreams come true.
That is why I have joined CASA HOGAR, I hope that these girls will grow like Jesus “in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Lk 2, 52).