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Proud and dignified, the 2,500 orphaned, abandoned, and very poor boys and girls of the Guatemalan charity La
Asociación Nuestros Ahijados are encouraged to study hard and succeed in school.
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Having earned the trust of local farmers, restaurants, and families, La Asociacion Nuestros Ahijados feeds 1100 meals a day to area poor, with donated foods and vegetables.
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The GOD’S CHILD Project
and La Asociación Nuestros Ahijados
OUR PURPOSE
The Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, sponsored by
The GOD'S CHILD Project, offers poor children and families in Guatemala a dignifying and permanent way to break out of poverty. These programs address both the present and future needs of very poor children by providing food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, structure, guidance and the support they need to one day make it on their own.
OUR BEGINNINGS
In July of 1983, GOD’S CHILD Project Founder Patrick Atkinson was asked to go to Guatemala, Central America, to temporarily direct an orphanage whose Executive Director needed a break from the stress and danger of those violent times. Atkinson’s appointment as orphanage director became permanent and during the next seven years he opened pioneering health, educational, and child-care centers in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Panama, as well as directed and participated in human rights efforts in El Salvador, Columbia, and Haiti.
Atkinson’s philosophy emphasizes the need to serve the children as if they were hijos propios, “children of our own flesh and blood.” Atkinson believes that we are to care for orphaned children as their own families would care for them if such were possible. As such, and also for very practical reasons, Atkinson’s child-care programs have been set up as foster families and small group homes. He and The GOD'S CHILD Project are against the institutionalization of children. This philosophy instills in homeless children a sense of security, belonging, and inspires them to develop long-term plans.
The programs that Atkinson has begun teach the children to study and value education. They encourage the children to explore educational options, set high goals for themselves, think of themselves as professionals, and dream about the day they will better the world. Many of the orphaned, abandoned, and impoverished street children cared for in Atkinson’s programs talk about the day they will become doctors, lawyers, clergy, engineers, dentists, and other professionals.
In June of 1989, Atkinson was transferred to Southeast Asia to continue his work. When that program was canceled a year later, he left international development work and returned to Bismarck, ND where he purchased a home and car, renewed relationships and applied to various law schools.
Unfortunately, the projects he had founded and directed in Central America during the 1980’s were redefined after his departure and dozens of Indian war orphans and adolescents were told to leave. This “program redefinition” was devastating to the boys and girls who had once been told, “We are your family. Stay in school and we will take care for you while you study.” Most of these newly-homeless adolescents had no place to go; several lived on the streets, others disappeared, and almost all dropped out of school since they could not finish studying on their own.
A concerned Guatemalan gave these homeless adolescents Atkinson’s address in Bismarck, ND, and in November of 1989 they began to write and ask for help. One letter came from an older boy who wrote, “Patrick, you were like a father to us and we loved having you here before, but now is when we need you the most. If you come back, we promise not to steal from you anymore.”
When these letters numbered more than a hundred, Atkinson decided he had to act. Traveling to Guatemala with two friends in June of 1990, he sought out several of the now-homeless children and tried unsuccessfully to find other programs that would help them. Leaving Guatemala in despair when that effort failed, he began to plan how he could finish raising and educating these children himself. His decision to once again care for and educate these children was a simple and natural response; it was the same that any responsible parent would have if his or her children were suddenly alone and suffering.
The decision to return to Guatemala and begin what was believed to be a short-term, immediate-care program was made in November of 1990. The name The GOD’S CHILD Project was chosen because Patrick was the godfather to so many of these initial children who were his godchildren through baptism, confirmation, or request. The new charity’s organizational plan was very simple; to care for 35 or so of the neediest children for three years while these children finished growing up.
During the first few months of 1991, Atkinson sold what personal goods he owned and returned to Guatemala on April 23rd of that same year. The day after he arrived in Guatemala, The GOD’S CHILD Project was approved as state officials as a North Dakota-based charity.
Patrick returned to Guatemala carrying only the money from the sale of his personal belongings and a handful of donations. He knew he had offers of support from family and friends and was certain of his new vocation. In Guatemala, he was given the use of a disabled pig truck to drive and an abandoned farmhouse in Pastores, Sacatepequez, in which to live.
While founding the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, a Guatemalan charity that would actually care for many of the children, Atkinson sought out the children who had written and who were in the greatest physical and moral danger, and found many in cantinas, streets, and prisons.
By June of 1991, the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados was caring for the 35 boys and girls Atkinson had planned to help. More children, however, continued to arrive.
By April of 1992, the program outgrew the borrowed farmhouse in Pastores and rented a hilltop house #76 in the Colonia Manchen on the edge of Antigua, Sacatepequez. Accessible only on foot, this small home was the center of all programmatic, planning, and accounting activities through June of 1994, a time during which Atkinson also lived in a small back room. The Manchen home was rented through June of 1998 and continued to be the program’s main office and project center until then. Between June of 1998 and October of 2000 this small home served as the program’s kitchen, as well as the family home for Dr. Luis Enrique Perez, a program graduate and the program doctor, and his family.
From June of 1994 through May of 1997, a second office was rented at #5 Colonia Virrey in Antigua. This home also served as the home for Atkinson and a number of emergency placement foster children, as well as being the program’s storerooms, and workshop.
The Edificio Tomas Kramer at #9 Sta. Ines del Monte Pulciano was dedicated on January 10th, 1996, after four years of on-again, off-again construction. This building was partially rented to commercial interests from April 1st, 1996, through April 1, 1997, at which time court proceedings were initiated against the renters for violation of the rental contract. After six months of court action, the renters were removed and the Edificio Tomas Kramer was once again made into a storage and school supply depot for the program. In October of 1999, the Edificio Tomas Kramer was returned to active use as a health, education, and Christian ministry center for the poor of that region.
On March 8th, 1996, a 21,000 square foot piece of property that had formerly been used as a public garbage dump was purchased in the San Felipe district of Antigua, Guatemala. Development on this property began in 1997 and several adjoining pieces of property have been purchased since then. This San Felipe property is the home of the DREAMER Center; the educational, health care, and community center for the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, and many public, regional activities and self-help groups.
The stateside office for the GOD’S CHILD Project is currently located at 721 Memorial Highway, Bismarck, North Dakota, 58504.
THE CHILDREN SERVED
The Asociación Nuestros Ahijados has grown, in sometimes careful and sometimes chaotic steps, from serving the needs of the original thirty-five children to caring for and educating seven hundred boys and girls by January 1996.
The several hundred children assisted by the GOD’S CHILD Project and the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados currently fall into twenty-one different “categories”. In general, though, they are children who are (a) exceptionally poor and continue to live with their own families, and (b) older, orphaned, abandoned, or otherwise hurt children who can no longer with their natural families. Children who are no longer living with their natural families are placed by the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados with local foster families. Forty percent of our children are girls; sixty percent are boys. While there are very few infants and young adults, virtually all of our children range in ages from five to twenty-two. The average age of our children is twelve. Seventy five percent of the children are mestizo (mixed Indian Mayan and Latino blood) and twenty five percent are Mayan Indian.
The GOD’S CHILD Project and the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados are dignifying programs which serve poor children wishing to break free from their chains of poverty. It is based on the Bismarck Educational Method, a child-care model designed by Atkinson that centers on the six principles of unconditional love, persistence, respect, faith, learning, and structure. The children served by the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados come from across Guatemala. There are specialized programs in the prisons and in cooperation with other national and international projects.
ACCEPTING NEW CHILDREN
If there are openings for new children to the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, two weeks are set aside each year (usually in November) when applications are accepted. Home visits are made to the families of the children who apply and the children’s individual needs, abilities, and desires to study are determined. Generally, new children who are accepted into the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados are exceptionally poor and capable children who show a strong desire to continue with their education.
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