Francisca's (18) life changed in 2008, when her father abandoned her family. "After that, my childhood is over. When would I go to high school if I had to take care of my siblings and clean the house?" she says. She spent almost three years without going to school, her days were divided into cleaning, cooking and taking her brothers to school. Thanks to Hogar de Cristo, she is now back to school. We need your support to continue helping young women like Francisca
Almost 40,000 children and young people dropped out of the school system in Chile in 2020 due to the pandemic. Young women like Francisca need our support as they know what it's like to be left out of school for problems that have nothing to do with them: The simple fact of being a girl continues to limit feminine horizons to the domestic space, depriving women of such fundamental rights as education, political participation, and paid work.
Today Francisca is studying thanks to Sumate Foundation. In 2021, she entered the Betania School, she received a notebook and internet connectivity and today, she has returned to face-to-face classes. "Without that help, I wouldn't have been able to go back to school". Her success story just shows how with focused support, the lives of thousands of girls can change for the better.
Hogar de Cristo, through Sumate Foundation has been working for 25 years on the subject of educational reinsertion. Poor women are poorer than poor men and this is explained by a cultural and historical issue, marked by gender inequality. Investment in women and girls is a proven way to eliminate the cycle of poverty, they deserve to thrive!
