Translator: Marília Correia Reviewer: Lalla Khadija Tigha
My name is Maria.
I am 14 years old and I have lived half of my life in orphanages.
Before, I used to live with my family but they were very poor
and they used to work outside of the city,
so I usually lived with my grandma or with neighbors.
I remember that at the end of the year we would take out a table
and have dinner outside together with my friends and my neighbors.
To me, they were like my family.
When I was placed in the first orphanage
I was told that I would stay there for only three months,
and that I would soon come back to my grandma.
Many years have passed by,
I was asked many times by the authorities
if I wanted to come back with her.
Regardless what I said I was moved to further and further away institutions.
Now I live so far away from my grandma that she cannot visit me anymore.
If someone had told me why I was being placed in this institution
I would have been able to solve this situation.
I know my grandma better than anyone and I want to help her
so I want to come back to her.
So many years have passed like this that I don't trust any adult anymore.
The majority of us were able to grow up in a family,
and the care and protection and support that our families gave us,
in whatever form it has,
together with a sense of belonging to our communities,
made us who we are today.
Unfortunately, living in a family is a privilege
and nowadays there are between 3 and 8 million children
living in institutions and in other forms of care outside of their families.
This is a global crisis with terrible consequences
on the individual lives of children.
Since it is proved that children living in institutions
are four times more exposed to sexual violence,
six times more exposed to physical violence,
and babies don't have the same developmental opportunities
as those babies growing up within families.
For many years I worked for a Latin American network
and this gave me the opportunity to do fieldwork and research
and talk to many children living in institutions.
Their life stories, some of them heartbreaking,
like the one that I shared today, were the ones who led me
to have a purpose related to protecting their rights and their wellbeing.
Today I would like to share with you some of the lessons I learned
about how to make sure that our children grow up in families
and I would like to motivate you to take action
to solve a societal issue you care about or you see around you in your societies.
In order to understand why there are so many children living in institutions
it is important for you to know the cause.
The real reason is that in most countries children live in institutions
because that is the first response from their states for those situations
when their families cannot take care or them,
either because of discrimination, because of disabilities,
or because of social marginalization.
Even in those cases when children are separated from their families
due to violence,
institutionalization always aggravates the situation
and is detrimental in the long term.
On the first week of March last year, me and my colleagues witnessed
a very striking, very extreme example of this,
when Guatemala had to mourn 41 teenage girls
who were killed in a state-run institution paradoxically called Safe Home.
The tragedy took place when a group of girls set mattresses on fire
in order to riot against overcrowding,
inadequate food, sexual abuse, and violence.
Again, the majority of these girls had families outside of the institution.
In fact, we can see them here mourning their girls in great distress
because they loved them.
They could have been able to take care of the girls
if they had had the necessary psychological and material help to do so.
And even in those situations in which children seem to be happy
and in which children get their material needs covered,
they will suffer consequences in the long term,
because placing them in institutions
instead of providing the necessary social welfare policies
so that families can take care of them, feeds the vicious cycle of poverty.
And once those children become young adults and leave the institution,
most probably they won't have the necessary social network
or preparation to live successful independent lives.
I learned the solution to this problem
from very well meaning and very committed professionals
who work around the world to make sure that children can grow up in families.
Our work is guided by our passion and also by the guidelines and standards
of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This document, which was most probably signed by the states of your countries,
establishes some standards
as to how to achieve that every child grows up in a family.
This is kind of technical, and it might be a little bit hard to understand
if you're not in the child rights sector.
But even a child can understand it.
And in fact, part of the solution is summarized in this drawing
made by a child living in an institution, which says
when a family is going through a problematic situation, help has to be--
like, for instance, parents are on drugs and children are in need--
help has to be sought after by our families or by foster families.
So this means that in every country
there must be a child care and protection system in place
that can offer different services, programs, and policies
for the families of those children not only institutionalizing them,
which is the main response right now.
The situation is that when a child is deemed to be an orphan
or when a family is going through a crisis situation,
the private and public authorities must take a decision
after going through a well-informed and thorough evaluation
called the Evaluation of the Best Interest of the Child.
So the evaluation of what is best for the child, in that moment,
in that situation.
This evaluation has to take into account the child's opinion and preferences
and should be respectful to his or her ethnic religious,
and cultural background.
In the cases of those children who have families to come back to,
or who have members of their community or relatives
who would like to take care of them,
the necessary policies and programs have to be provided to them.
This can go from universal policies such as health care, education, nurseries
and sexual reproduction policies,
to specialized programs like treatment centers for substance abuse,
for the treatment of domestic violence,
and specialized support for child-heavy households.
No matter what situation is taken as a sustainable
and long-term solution for this child,
while he has to wait for the solution,
he or she should be able to live in a family,
which would be a foster family, or in another form of family-like care.
Usually people are familiar with the term of adoption
because a legal bond is created between children and their new families
but not everyone knows foster care.
So I will explain to you that a foster family integrates children into his family
in order to provide them with a safe and caring environment
until a final situation is decided upon--
so until the child comes back to his or her family of origin,
until he or she is adopted,
or he or she becomes an independent young adult
and can start living his or her independent life.
These families can be related to the child,
so they can be friends, neighbors, or other acquaintances.
And in fact the practice of fostering children
has spontaneously existed for millennia across all cultures of the world.
Many states know this,
and they have turned this cultural practice into well organized programs
by which families that are unrelated to the child are recruited
either by the state or NGOs and take care of these children temporarily,
because they want to show their solidarity
for those children and families going through crisis.
I want you to understand the positive impact
that these policies can have on a child,
so I will tell you the story of Tobias,
of the foster family of Tobias-- mainly the foster mom, Maria Inez,
and his adoptive families, Roberto and Mirta.
Few years ago, the government of Paraguay
decided to close a babies institution called El Hogarcito.
At El Hogarcito, Tobias lived and had spent all of his short life there.
He was two years old when the home started being closed down
and when the government started looking for families,
either adoptive or foster families or the own familes of the babies
so they could come back to some kind of family.
At the same time, Maria Inez started working as a nurse in that institution.
And she was shocked when she arrived
to see so many very small unfortunate babies cramped up in the same space.
Very soon she fell in love with Tobias.
It was her favorite baby.
So even though she had children--
she had already raised five children and one grandchild--
when the opportunity arose to become the foster family of Tobias,
she didn't hesitate.
It was not a long time after that that Tobias started blossoming
thanks to the love of Maria Inez and her family.
Even though when he was at the institution he was not able to walk or speak
and he was really frightful of adult people,
after three months of living with Maria Inez,
he started talking, he started walking, he became much more confident.
And this led him to start asking about his family,
his "real" family or final family.
Maria Inez and her husband told Tobias all the time
that they were not his real family, that they were just a temporary family,
that his real or final family lived very far away from them
and they would pick him up some time on a plane.
So they would come by plane to pick him up.
For this reason, every time Tobias heard an airplane passing over them
he would ask them if that was the plane
where his parents were coming to pick him up.
After one year, an adoptive family was found for Tobias.
They were a very nice, very loving couple who liked him very, very much.
When the final adoption decision was made,
Tobias' foster parents, and the adoptive family --
the future parents,
decided that they would make Tobias' dream come true.
Even though they lived kind of near, one from the other,
they decided that the best place for Tobias to meet his future parents
would be at the airport.
So they staged a meeting at the airport,
and it was the most important day of the life of all of them
because on the 23rd of December, so one day before Christmas Eve,
they got together at the airport.
And when Tobias saw the parents coming down the hall--
Sorry I get--
I was told the story by them so it brings me memories.
When they saw Tobias and Tobias saw them coming down the hall,
he ran towards them with his little feet
and he hugged them like he had known them since ever.
10 years have passed by since then.
This is Tobias today.
He is 10 years old now,
and his parents, his adoptive parents, still love him very, very, very much.
They are very proud of him.
And they are very happy to see that he has become a very good boy,
a very good person, and that he's a football fan also.
And he is very helpful to them and they are really, really happy
to have him in their lives.
Maria Inez says that fostering Tobias
was the best thing that she has done in her life.
And she, since then, has fostered other babies
coming out from the institution, from the Hogarcito.
She believes that fostering these children
is the best heritage she can leave to her biological children.
And that she is very fulfilled, she feels very happy
every time she sees a child coming out from the institution,
passing through the foster family, and then to the adoptive family.
So this is a very good example that --
family life for all children will only be achieved
once the state has a commitment.
Because this story, very nice story, happy ending, of Tobias
was made possible because of the extreme focus and cooperation
of the state and international organizations and national organizations.
And most probably, in most of our countries,
family life for every child will be made possible
only when it becomes the priority
in the agendas of our governments and decision makers.
However, right now, there's something that each one of us can do
to make sure that children live in safe and caring families
and hopefully in protective, supporting, and caring societies.
OK.
I hope that these stories that I shared with you today
will motivate you to find a purpose
that has to do with improving the life of those whose rights have been denied
and whose dreams have been denied also.
I know that each one of us can do something
to make our societies better,
and to help accomplish the rights of these children.
And in my opinion that is an idea much worth spreading.
So thank you very much for listening to me.
(Applause)