This orphanage was founded by a church from the Puerto Rico that came to the Dominican Republic town of Montecristi between 1977 and 1978. The founders of the orphanage were Pastors Rev. Hector Santiago, his wife Ana de Santiago, and all the leaders of the church. They had the vision to build a home for orphaned children from the town and all around the country, as Jesus ordered in Saint Mattew go
spel 25:35-36. The construction of the house was finished in 1982, and right away the first children were received at the orphanage “ La Esperanza de un Niño”. The original directors were the Vargas family, Pastor Rev. Hector Vargas and his wife Gloria Vargas. By the end of 1983, the Vargas family was transfered to another town and at that time Pastor Ramon Perdomo and his wife Martha Acevedo were chosen as the directors. Since then we have received many boys and girls from all different towns. We have seen these children grow up and become thriving members of society. In 1994, Tomas Eklund joined this huge project. He founded an organization called “Orphanage Outreach” to help out the orphanage. His work with us was very successful and brought a lot of help to our children and our community. He gave us the funds to keep this orphanage working. He also help to make the expansion of our building facities for our children possible. He also built some buildings on the property to increase a volunteer program for those who wanted to come visit our orphanage. The volunteers stayed in these buildings and received food, transportation, and a work program for the time they were here. These volunteers raised donations for his organization to cover all these expenses, and thus they brought a lot of donations to the children and the community of Montecristi. Tomas Eklund and his team helped us a lot during the time they worked with us. He helped to send some of our children to the university. His work finished in 2011 after working with us for 17 years. Before Orphanage Outreach left we had 47 children, ages 6-18 years, but since their departure in July 2011 we have been forced to send 29 children to their relative's houses due to the difficult economic situation we are currently facing due to the lack of funds. Currently we have 16 children, but we have enough infrastructure to have 100 children. We are working very hard to give all these children what they need and to hopefully house more children in the future. We currently have our own volunteer program open which is a way you can provide support for these children. Please, visit our website. For the close future we want:
1.To have all we need, so we never again have to send home a child before the age of 18.
2.- To use all the spaces and areas we have, so that this institution becomes we want it to be: successful in the service for the children, the community, and the church.
