Philadelphia effort gives children in Honduras hope

MACUELIZO, Honduras - "My dad died. I don't know my mother," said Gilberto Perdomo, 22, as he slalomed a white minivan around potholes on a rutted dirt road.

Nicknamed "Chango," Spanish slang for monkey, Perdomo is among the oldest orphans at Amigos de Jesus, a children's home created here by a Catholic priest, a dedicated lay couple, and with faith-driven support - all from greater Philadelphia.

The Christian cross atop the hill at the Honduran home's 42-acre campus is a Villanova University creation. The crouching boys who shoot marbles on a grassy field sport faded shirts emblazoned Great Valley, Phoenixville, East Norriton, and Brandywine.

But this land - where the world's highest homicide rate, persistent hunger, and grinding poverty drive waves of illegal immigration to America - is 3,300 miles, and a world of chance apart, from the common comforts of the Delaware Valley.

More than any country, Honduras has flooded America's southern border with unaccompanied children since April.

Amigos' goal has always been to feed, clothe, educate, and empower young Hondurans in place, giving them tools and opportunities in their homeland, and lessening the pressure to emigrate.

Carved from a soggy, snake-infested landscape in 1997, Amigos began providing shelter for a handful of abused and abandoned boys.

Run on an annual budget of about $600,000 in private donations, Amigos is now home to 120 children and young adults, ages 2 through their early 20s, who live in bunk-bedded dormitories and a handful of independent-living houses. They attend school on the campus wearing dark-brown pants and sky-blue tunics. The youngest are called chiquitos; the fantasticos are the special-needs kids.

With donated office space at St. Patrick's church in Malvern, and 6,000 donors across greater Philadelphia, the organization is rapidly growing.

"I don't know how it will all work out," said the Rev. Dennis O'Donnell, 67, who was raised in Northeast Philadelphia and cofounded Amigos. "I know that a kid who formerly lived in the streets huffing glue is in the university studying psychology, or is a carpenter, or knows how to farm. . . . I know there is a need and we have the capacity to meet it. The rest is in God's hands."

In Perdomo's case, it might be working.

A skillful driver, he helps Amigos with its transportation needs. On a steamy day two weeks ago he accompanied Amigos' lawyer, Suyapa Sabillon, a moon-faced woman of intense energy, on the bumpy two-hour ride to the nearest big city, San Pedro Sula.

Sabillon carried X-rays and other medical records for two orphaned girls who arrived at Amigos last year with no vital information, not even dates of birth. Forensic doctors in San Pedro Sula will use arm-bone length and other data to try to establish their ages and some genetic history. Then Sabillon will ask a court to issue birth certificates, which are essential for proof of identity here.

As Perdomo drove he spoke about his past. He was raised mostly by his father's sister, he said, but she had children of her own, her house was crowded, and she began to look for a place he could go. He was 14, with a third-grade education, when he arrived at Amigos.

He eventually completed a high-school equivalency certificate and apprenticed at Amigos' welding shop under the guidance of a man from a nearby village.

Perdomo learned to build tables and weld window frames. His favorite job is fabricating bunk beds - in high demand because the population of Amigos - including 40 paid and volunteer staff - has more than doubled since 2012.

Perdomo imagines his future as a welder in Honduras - a soldadero - and hopes it will provide a decent living. "I feel prepared for my life here," he said. "I don't feel like I have to go mojado," which means "wet" - slang for someone who crosses the Rio Grande to enter the United States illegally.

At the heart of Amigos' creation story are Anthony and Christine Granese, a Villanova-trained civil engineer and his wife, a physical therapist, who lived in a tent at the site after the land was purchased with a donation from Philadelphia.

With the help of local laborers, the Graneses dug a 37-foot well by hand to get water for building and bucket baths. Anthony Granese had met O'Donnell, whom he calls "Father Den," at soul-searching sessions on life and faith at the Malvern Retreat House. Granese's infectious enthusiasm for Central America, where he had been involved with a different children's home, sparked O'Donnell's interest in the region.

Granese estimated they would need $300,000 to grade and build on the Honduran property. The first $100,000 came from Myung Song, an O'Donnell friend, who just happened to head Larami, the toy company that scored big with the Super Soaker. Charity outings organized by O'Donnell at Whitemarsh and Philadelphia country clubs kicked in an additional $198,000.

To call Amigos an orphanage is a bit of a misnomer, although its children come from broken homes, have lost parents to homicide, or were abandoned into Honduras' weak social services system.

The distinction: Amigos' children are not up for adoption. They live together in a sprawling family unit and no one ages out.

"There's never an age when you can't be here," volunteer Emily Pettinger, 23, of Naperville, Ill., said over an Amigos dinner of red beans and rice. "Amigos will be here until you find another love or skill. There are some who might be here forever, and that's just a fine, suitable situation for them, too."

Children have the security of knowing their virtual brothers and sisters will be with them for the long haul. That feeling of support was passed tangibly from hand to hand at a sunset Prayer Circle two weeks ago where even the youngest children publicly thanked God for their friends and caregivers. With arms extended and hands joined, the group encompassed an area as big as an Olympic pool.

The home's agriculture program aspires to self-sufficiency. It raises and slaughters about 200 chickens a month, maintains dairy cows for milk, and even has tilapia ponds.

Much of the clothing, like the Philadelphia-area logo shirts worn by some of the marbles players, are hand-me-downs. The Philadelphia Union soccer team sends jerseys. Several times a year, Amigos arranges the shipment of a 40-foot container usually packed with bicycles, cooking equipment, building supplies, and other necessities. The wish list at the moment includes welding machinery and tools.

Some supporters have called Amigos "the happiest sad place on earth," said the group's Malvern-based executive director, Emily Ford.

Ann Carr, of Langhorne, a pediatrician at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, who performed medical screenings at Amigos in June, calls it "a healing monastery for little people."

In a country where abandonment and malnutrition are rampant, said Carr, Amigos children are well cared for, but need time to heal from the secondary effects of their country's pervasive violence.

Education is delivered through a bilingual program in Spanish and English for grades pre-K through three and in Spanish through sixth grade. Middle and high school are in a local town. There is university study for academically oriented children, and vocational training. For about $20 a month, local children may also attend the school.

Six-year-old Maria Fernanda, of nearby La Flecha, is in first grade at Amigos. Her mother, Iscela Quintanilla, 29, a single parent, recently lost her office job at a sugar company. She was at Amigos two weeks ago for a happy, Latin country tradition: a daylong celebration of children, known as Dia del Niño.

"I make sacrifices for her to go to this school," she said, "but it's the best thing. With an education, and a better future, she won't be forced to leave."

This month, four Amigos youth, ages 8 to 22, came to the Philadelphia area for 10 days of sightseeing, skill-building, and fund-raising. They were accompanied by Sabillon and Wilson Escoto, 37, who with his wife, Amy, are Amigos' in-country directors.

The visitors went to a Jersey Shore beach house, the Philadelphia Zoo, a Union game, and a Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts fund-raiser that featured Broadway stars. To show them that Americans also struggle, Ford took them for a morning at the West Chester Food Cupboard.

The foursome included Perdomo, the 22-year-old, for whom they added a special stop.

To reinforce Perdomo's welding skills, Amigos board member Ken Neeld called on his friend Matt Oswald, owner of the Car Cure body shop in West Chester. They arranged a sort of master class for the young man. For more than an hour, Joe Bluebello, Car Cure's best welder, showed Perdomo how to use a plasma cutter to slice easily through steel plates. In Honduras, they typically cut steel plates with a grinding wheel turned on its edge, which is risky and inefficient.

Bluebello demonstrated a mig welder, which was familiar to Perdomo, and an oxygen/acetylene torch, which was not. He showed him how to braze, joining two metals with a stitch of molten bronze.

Grinning, Perdomo looked like a man exposed to a high-performance sports car after years behind the wheel of a jalopy. As souvenirs of the experience, Oswald gave Perdomo a snazzy welder's helmet and heat-resistant gloves. Oswald estimated it would take $15,000 to $25,000 to equip a good welding shop for Perdomo in Honduras. Establishing him and other boys interested in welding in a viable business, said Wilson Escoto, is an Amigos goal.

Escoto, 37, was raised in a different Honduran orphanage after his father was murdered and the burden of raising six children became too much for his mother.

"I know these children have the same questions I did," said Escoto. "If there is a God, where was he when I was going through such hard times?"

Volunteer Emma Strobel, 25, has a master's degree and teaches elementary math at Amigos. She knows the children ponder hard, existential questions and is endlessly impressed by their resilience. "You never realize how much a human being is capable of," she said during a break, "until they are dealt a really tough hand."

The day before the Amigos group returned to Honduras last week there was a send-off at Malvern Preparatory School. Eight-year-old Arcadia could barely be pried loose from the moon bounce. Teens Victor and Ariel circulated at the picnic with big smiles, as did Perdomo.

Supporters included Alejandro and Janine Zozaya, a married couple from Berwyn. He is CEO of Apple Leisure Group, which runs hotels, resorts, and vacation clubs across the Caribbean and Mexico. She is on Amigos' board.

Taking note of the summer's surge in unaccompanied minors, including thousands of young Hondurans, Alejandro Zozaya said: "They leave because they are desperate.

"So how can we help without motivating them to keep coming? How can America really make a difference without fueling this problem?"

The answer, he said, is "to give them hope over there. Which is exactly what Amigos is doing."

215-854-2541 @MichaelMatza1