globalgirl network

By Charity Pilkey


I first went to El Salvador in January 2000. Some long-time family friends from Canada had been living there to help with reparations following the destruction of Hurricane Mitch. I received regular reports from this family and, in particular, God spoke to my heart concerning the state of the orphanages there. I signed up to volunteer for four months in the baby room of a government-run orphanage.


I immediately fell in love with El Salvador: the land, the people and the climate. And I became instant friends with the leaders of Kemuel Church where I attended with the Canadian family who hosted me. I connected especially with Cristina de Hasbún, the wife of Pastor Juan Carlos Hasbún.


Starved of Love and Nourishment

Even though my first day at the El Salvadoran Institute for Abandoned Babies (ISNA) was not my first time in an orphanage, and I had read stories of what I was about to see, nothing could have prepared me. I recall standing at the doorway to a small room filled with the smell of unchanged cloth diapers and the sound of desperate and sick infants. Everything seemed to go in slow motion as I walked to the back of the room; the babies all around me seemed to fade like a dream until one little girl focused in before me. I reached down and picked her up. She was wet with sweat and urine and though she appeared to be over 10 months old and without any handicaps, she was barely able to hold her head up as she looked at me with hopeful eyes. Like the 49 other babies in the room, she had been starved of love and proper nourishment.


There were usually about 50 babies between the ages of one day to 18 months in that room and there was only one assigned worker, plus myself, to feed, change and care for them all. There were other rooms too, with more, older children. Any donations of clothing or toys brought in for the children were quickly taken by staff members to sell in the market or bring home to their own children. Babies were only changed from cloth diapers when they were dirty, not wet, and they spread diaper rash by using the same cream on all the babies. Colds spread as they used the same tool to clear mucus from the little noses, while other sicknesses spread from the general lack of hygiene and the close sleeping quarters. There were small bassinettes with two or three babies scrunched up in each one, while bigger cribs held two to five babies side by side. Bottles were propped up on each baby (and not held) and when babies were carried to the change table they were held up in the air in order not to get dirty.



Meeting Manuel

One baby especially left an impression on me. He weighed less than 10 pounds and looked like a skeleton. No one knew his age, although from the length of his body and the look of his face he was probably about three years old. His name was Manuel. I found him crying, without a sound, his face contorted in pain. I put my hand on his chest to calm him and found that my hand sunk where his ribs ended. His tummy was paper thin. He had just soiled his undershirt and when I picked him up I could feel that he had soiled himself more than once but had not been changed. His skin was hard with his own excrement. I changed him and bathed him, carefully scrubbing the skin that hung loosely off of tiny bones. Once he was cleaned and dressed, I laid him down again and got a small cup of baby food to feed him.


A worker came by and told me that he doesn’t eat. I discovered what she meant was that he is starving to death and his tongue is constantly moving for want of nourishment or thirst (a common occurrence in someone about to die). With every bite, he would push most of the spoonful back out with his tongue. It took me an hour to feed him a small cup of food, but he ate it all. After a week he had gained some strength and was on the way to recovery.


I went home for a long weekend and came back on Monday morning with a team of student volunteers. Before I gave the students a tour, one of the workers came to greet me. She wanted me to know that Manuel died in the night. My heart sunk and I swallowed tears as I continued to show students how to change diapers and let them know our schedule and all of the babies’ names.


When I got home that night I cried, I cried more than I have ever cried in my life. Although Manuel was now in a better place, in the arms of his heavenly father, I was outraged that from a human perspective he was allowed to die. He never should have died. I knew then that something had to be done; someone had to establish an orphanage where children could go and receive care that would not kill them. It had to be a place where abandoned children could know love and the fatherless could be given a family. I didn’t know then that I would have any involvement in such an orphanage … I only thought I should pray.


The remaining two months I spent working, building relationships within the church and praying. I was preparing myself to go home when I met an American evangelist who asked me what I was doing in El Salvador. I told him I was going home to Canada, but I had been working with orphans. He asked when I was coming back and I told him I had no plans to return. He believed God wanted me to know that when I came back I did not to worry about funds because my Heavenly Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He would provide.


Understanding the Situation

I went home and pondered what he said to me, but still made no plans to return. I did, however, begin to research El Salvador. I wanted to know why children were being abandoned and neglected. I studied the Spanish conquest, the poverty and slavery, I studied the injustices over land and agriculture and I studied the culture and the rich family life they had prided themselves on. I also studied the 12-year civil war and the atrocities and war crimes against villages, the use of child soldiers and the statistics on numbers killed. I learned that during the war 350,000 children were abandoned. I also learnt that during and after the war there was a major breakdown in family values and the life of the nation. Parents were given to drinking and abusing their children and hundreds left for the United States, either leaving their children behind or joining gangs and returning as gang lords to bring even more terror to the streets of El Salvador. As I studied, God opened my eyes to see El Salvador through His eternal eyes, and he gave me a burden to pray very specifically for the families of El Salvador, for His people and for the children who would bridge the gap between this generation and the next. The children are El Salvador’s future and God’s vision for these children is a vision of hope.


One year after arriving home from my first trip to El Salvador I was planning my second trip and had been writing plans for an orphanage there. I still was not thinking I would be involved in building an orphanage, only that I wanted to write down ideas to pray about. I didn’t think of it as a vision to do something, but as a burden for the country and I needed to write it down to know how to pray.


Cristina de Hasbún sent me a note a few weeks before my flight to let me know that everything was in place for my volunteering—this time with toddlers, in the same place—and that the church was looking forward to my return. She also wrote that God had given her a vision for her country that she believed I was a part of. She asked me to be in prayer before my arrival. Just after I was picked up from the airport, Cristina asked me if I knew what we would be doing. Without even thinking I said, “We are building an orphanage.” And she said, “Yes.”


In Training

In December 2002 before my third trip to El Salvador I was talking to a couple from my church in Canada. They said they had been praying about my vision to build an orphanage in El Salvador and that I should really get some specific training. They asked me to pray about going to Uganda and they would cover the costs. I had friends in Uganda who had set up a training center at their orphanage and I had been hoping and praying to go there for a long time. I told them I didn’t need to pray further, they were the answer to my prayers, and yes I would go!


I spent one month in Uganda traveling to visit other family friends and ministries and was also involved in interviewing the prospective staff for a new children’s centre in Northern Uganda. As I sat interviewing people I had visions of doing the same in El Salvador some day.


From February until July 2004, I learned from some very wise Ugandans, Americans and Britons, both the theology and practicalities of working with orphans and building families out of staff and orphans. I studied business management, accounting, counseling for children, marriage and families, and so much more. I was also assigned to a family group of orphans and worked alongside children in their gardens, helped with homework and devotions and did informal counseling. I also worked in the clinic. I received an understanding of every department needed for running an orphanage. I was also given a focus for my own vision and was able to have my project plans critiqued by an American businessman.


Home in El Salvador

In March 2005 I returned to El Salvador, but only for a month. At the time I had surrendered to the fact that God did not need me to accomplish this work and I was ready to hand it over fully to the church there and say my goodbyes. I found, though, that God gave the vision back to me and along with it the responsibility to see it accomplished. Kemuel Church said that they were preparing and waiting for me. They believed that God had given me the plan and they were waiting for me to write it all down and come to live there and put everything in place. They also encouraged me to take some formal language training.


I signed up for a language school in Antigua, Guatemala and went to El Salvador on my way there in January 2006. Six years after my first trip, I arrived back in El Salvador and had the comforting feeling of being home. I met with a lawyer and began the legal process for establishing an orphanage and also received a temporary resident card for myself. It was great to catch up with friends in the church who are now my family.


My passion is to see children raised in a family. It’s what I feel called to do and believe in.



About Charity:
Charity Pilkey started The New Life Foundation and recently purchasd a 10-acre plot of land for about US$125,000. Construction is expected to begin in 2008 at a cost of US$100,000. Pilkey is hoping to cut some of the costs through volunteers going to El Salvador to help. For more information, check out their website at www.tnlfchildrenscenter.org.