Recent News: La Ciudad de los Niños

In the May/June 2023 newsletter, Fr. Scott made a special birthday request to make a gift to TASH to provide funding for an orphanage, La Ciudad de los Niños. On February 24, the organization held an event to make public the initial opening of a 100-bed dormitory on their grounds.

Their original dormitory and administrative building were heavily damaged by an earthquake reaching 7.7 on the Richter scale, on September 7, 2017. It was a complicated process to determine if the best option would be to repair the former building or start fresh. After the local government authorities made their final determination, the only viable alternative was to demolish the old building and begin the lengthy process of architectural designs, special building permits, a COVID-19 pandemic interruption, and a major fundraising campaign. For several years, the children were living in provisional bunkbeds in the common eating area.      

It was in 2020 that the TASH reached out to local orphanages and landed on two, Simply Smiles and La Ciudad de los Niños. Our first project was to support Simply Smiles. Shortly thereafter in 2021, we were engaged with La Ciudad de los Niños and began to coordinate with the local leadership to establish the terms for our involvement, starting with the demolition, which happened in 2022. Shortly thereafter, we agreed to an initial project to build the new orphanage in two stages, a first floor for 50 children and a second floor for the other 50. Of course, God works in mysterious ways and the orphanage wasn’t going to build itself.   

Therefore in 2023, Fr. Scott wrote to you all. Thanks to your generosity, we realized that we could cover the full build, which would reduce the costs of renewing permits, possible inflationary costs of construction materials, and most importantly, allow for La Ciudad de los Niños to grow from 50 to 100 children and youth. This orphanage (or Casa de Hogar as it is known in Oaxaca), founded in 1958, by another charismatic Roman Catholic priest, Padre Jose Miguel, is now the largest of its kind in Oaxaca.     

Again, thanks to Fr. Scott’s vision and with TASH approaching its 25th anniversary, we can with your support continue to install essential building blocks in the areas of medical attention and healthcare, shelter, education, clean water, & community development, that will provide opportunities for decades to come.

We hope you will continue our journey towards the 25th anniversary of TASH in 2025.