Manchay Family Centre

 

Manchay Family Centre

Our Oasis Family Centre is based just outside Lima in the slums of Manchay. Poverty here is widespread. Homes in this area are often shacks made of cardboard or tin, and have no running water, sanitation, or electricity.  A culture of violence towards women and children pervades with negligible access to justice.  Malnourishment, neglect and abuse are rampant.

Our Family Centre offers a ray of hope to some of the slum's most vulnerable children, by ensuring they are in strong and safe families, where they are encouraged in their education and their emotional and spiritual well-being, as well as being properly fed and cared for.

The Centre crucially provides a range of family strengthening interventions, especially for single mums. These include livelihood support initiatives such as tailoring and sewing programmes as well as cakes and bakes businesses, all of which provide vulnerable families with sustainable incomes, dignity and a sense of purpose.

Our team includes psychologists and social workers, who help the children and families cope with past traumas, especially young mums and victims of sexual abuse. We also connect them to churches and mentor couples, who offer additional counselling and general love and friendship.

Looking forward, we are passionate about further developing our vision of restoration of healthy family relationships, as we pray that our work will bear fruit in the lives of the vulnerable families of Manchay.

Manchay Oasis Care Centre and School: A story of hope

Meet Pedro (name changed to protect privacy)

Pedro is only seven years old, but his life has already been full of pain and loss. He is the youngest of five children in a home marked by dysfunction and full of emotional, social and financial problems. With his father in prison for rape and his mother unsure how to provide adequate care or protection, Pedro is at risk of many dangers.

But we are thankful that Pedro attends our care centre, where he receives healthy food every day and hears about how much he is loved. Because of generous sponsors, he is also receiving an education that will help him break out of poverty and avoid the cycles of violence in his family and community.

As he learns and grows, we are working closely with his family to provide the help they need to care for this polite and loving child. Pedro is doing well in our programme and we have great hope that his traumatic past will not determine his future.

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