“So we have a little basket at the door of the orphanage – which is a 150-year-old Home – and with a tradition of a little basket at the door,” she explained.
In the year 1857, Don Rafael Ayau built the first orphanage in Guatemala City, known as “The Home of Mercy”. Because of broken homes, crime, war, unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, hundreds of poor children could not be well taken care of by their parents and many lived in the streets to survive.
For the sake of these homeless children, one man’s dream became a reality. But during the early 1970s, the Guatemalan government expropriated the orphanage and named it ”Hogar Rafael Ayau”, in honor of its founder. In the year 1996, under the administration of President Álvaro Arzú and the First Lady Patricia Arzú, the orphanage was given back to private stewardship, to the Orthodox Church, and a new chapter in its history was written.
After more than a year of general repairs and renovations of the eight dilapidated buildings of the Hogar, the Hogar reopened its doors once again to welcome 115 children on October 13th of 1997.
The Hogar Rafael Ayau Orphanage is under the responsibility of the Catholic Apostolic Orthodox Antiochian Church of Guatemala.
Children may be sponsored by an individual, a family, a church, a company, a school or any combination thereof. The sponsorship provides food, education, recreation, healthcare and the arts.
To learn more about the Hogar, please visit their website. To read about the journey of a special little boy, please see this article, from KDKA News, in Pittsburgh.
Thank you very much for including the Hogar on your website. I am the treasurer of the Foundation that helps to support the Hogar here in the US.
Your website is fantastic. I will be a frequent user since it has so much of the information that I need for my work in Guatemala.
Again, many thanks.
Harriet Stratis