Nearly half of all Panamanians live in poverty, and demographically speaking, we’re a young country. Those are two ingredients in a recipe for disaster, and we do see many terrible things happening to too many Panamanian kids. Yet this country has avoided the fate of some of our neighbors, where packs of homeless kids live on the streets of their cities, throwaway people come in all ages and social problems are left for foreign charities and some often predatory domestic and international market forces to address. We have stayed off the paths trod by places like Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras, without, however, anything that much resembles the social welfare institutions found in Europe and North America.
So how does Panama manage to look after its children at risk?
By and large, we do so privately. Our first recourse when parents are absent, or unable or unwilling to care for their children, is to the extended family or to godparents.The churches and private charities are generally there to catch the kids who fall through the gaps in these social networks. The government plays a role through the schools, the family courts and other institutions, but mostly the political class is concerned with its own welfare rather than that of needy kids.
One of the principal barriers between Panama’s neediest children and the lot of their counterparts in some of the neighboring countries is Casa Esperanza, an organization that was founded in 1992 to find alternatives for kids who were working, panhandling or just hanging out on the streets for lack of an opportunity to do anything better. From its initial single house on Avenida Mexico, a couple of blocks from the American consulate, Casa Esperanza’s facilities and activities have grown both in the capital and across the country.
I recently sat down with Casa Esperanza’s Astrid Salazar at the group’s modest administrative office in a Curundu Flats duplex to discuss what the group does and how it does it.
Resources are of course a limiting factor. Casa Esperanza gets about 40 percent of its income from corporate contributions and about one-third from private individuals. Fundraising events bring in about 10 percent of the group’s income, international organizations contribute about five percent, there are some in-kind donations, and the government and the nation’s civic organizations kick in about three percent of its revenue. Salazar said that the group’s diverse sources of income have helped it survive the difficult economy of recent years, because when some sources have diminished, others have tended to pick up the slack.
With such resources as it can muster Casa Esperanza runs five basic programs, which when looked at as a whole actually involve slightly more parents than kids.
The original and biggest program is the network of seven Integral Attention Centers. These facilities, generally located in converted houses, support the nutritional, educational, health, sporting and personal and social developmental needs of kids who would otherwise be scrounging for a living and missing out on those parts of their lives. The street kids whom Casa Esperanza serves are not referred to them by the government, but are instead sought out and attracted in by educators who work for Casa Esperanza. About one-third of the kids it contacts in Panama City are at work selling things on the street, and almost as many are shining shoes, washing cars or offering other services. About 15 percent are collecting things to sell to recyclers and another 15 percent are begging. A few are just hanging out. If they come into one of the capital’s three Integral Attention Centers (besides the one on Avenida Mexico there are facilities in Samaria and Curundu), they may find a mini-soccer game to participate in, something to eat, a seminar on a subject of importance to their lives or help with their homework. Most of all, they’ll find adults with whom to talk, people who will take an interest in whether they are going to school, getting the health care they need and growing and thriving.
In addition to the three centers in Panama City, Casa Esperanza runs two facilities in the city of Colon, one in Aguadulce and another in Boquete.
Casa Esperanza does not seek to substitute for parents, but to assist parents whose circumstances make it hard for them to raise their children as they ought to be raised. Thus the group’s second major effort, its Family Orientation Program. This is an informal educational program that serves hundreds of parents, many of them single mothers without much education. The program teaches parenting skills, provides child care while parents meet with their peers, has literacy courses for those who need it and is a source of family planning information.
Another program that’s oriented toward mothers, particularly in the Interior, is Casa Esperanza’s Program for the Promotion and Financing of Self-Sufficiency. This is an incubator of small businesses that can earn impoverished families enough income so that they don’t have to pull their kids out of school and send them to work so that the family can eat.
Casa Esperanza’s biggest rural effort, which operates in 40 communities across the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, is the Training Program in the Rights of Children. But for the fact that most Panamanians never see how people live in the comarca, the school dropout and child malnutrition rates in that part of the country would amount to a national scandal that would overshadow all of Panama’s other unseemly situations. Using parents, adolescents and student from the Autonomous University of Chiriqui, Casa Esperanza is on a mission to spread a message throughout the indigenous community. Unlike other missionaries, the message they bring is not that those who don’t accept a particular interpretation of holy scriptures are doomed to eternal damnation. It’s that every kid has a right to a childhood, and most particularly, a right to an education.
Because of the widespread poverty in the comarca, many families must make seasonal migrations to coffee plantations to pick the beans for the pittance that spells the difference between surviving in poverty and outright starvation. Casa Esperanza works on many of the coffee farms to ensure that the migrant kids don’t entirely miss out on an education because of their families’ need to work.
Casa Esperanza’s newest program, begun this year, is a work skills training program for single mothers and adolescents. The main emphasis is on skills needed in the one major economic sector that’s growing in these hard times, tourism. Participants learn how to do the jobs that are available in hotels and restaurants, and the basics of computer literacy that are becoming part of almost every job in the modern economy.
Casa Esperanza is not the only group that’s doing worthy things to help Panama’s needy kids. It is, however, an indispensable strand in our society’s social safety net. If you want to lend a hand, or make a donation, or find out more, contact Casa Esperanza by email at cesperanza@cwp.net.pa, call them at (507) 232-7367, or visit their website at http://www.casaesperanza.org.pa.
