Last month, Hope Projects was bestowed two awards: the 2024 Presidential Humanitarian Service Award and the Presidential Special Achievement Award, both of which you can see below.
Our first award, the 2024 Presidential Humanitarian Service Award, was given as recognition for the help that you, us, and all the members of the Hope Project family have provided to tens of thousands of people living in the high Andes and the Amazon Basin. We couldn't have done this without you!
Our second award, the Presidential Special Achievement Award, has to do with Hope Projects' efforts with the Big Girl's Orphanage project, as you can see below. To give some background, in Cusco Peru, there are over 14,000 orphaned street children who are at serious risk, and according to the police department, hundreds of children each year are abducted. Up until 2013 Hope Projects sponsored 355 orphans in our two main orphanages: The “Little Boys Orphanage” and the “Little Girls Orphanage” for street children ages 1 to 18.
On July 27, 2013, I organized our ‘Big Girls Orphanage’ after an 18-year-old girl named Ruth. In a nutshell, Ruth suffered immensely at the hands of wicked men. At the age of fifteen, she was rescued from her captivity during a Peru Federal Police raid. The authorities sent Ruth back to the police department in Cusco. There she was in custody, all alone, with no family, no money, no self-worth, no hope, and only one dress. She carried around horrible memories that she struggled to get out of her mind. One police officer felt sorry for her and contacted Hope Projects to see if we had room for Ruth. We didn’t, so we created our “Big Gils Orphanage” with the help of our American donors, and the dedication of the staff at Hope Projects, namely Cesar Rodrigues our project supervisor, and his wife Janet, our accountant since 1999.
We have expanded our Big Girl Orphanage several times since 2013 and last year we began building and remodeling existing rooms building to our 25-room building and the expansion of twenty-five additional rooms was added to accommodate 50 new girls and a total of 300 Big Girls. Plus, I added 12 bunk beds in 12 of the larger rooms as an experiment, so our total capacity now has been expanded to accommodate 62 new Big Girls. We now have a new total capacity of 312 Big Girls Orphans.
We were honored & need to share this award with our USA donors who made it all possible.
Thank you
~~~ Jerry and Ella Simons~~~
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