Mama Kia, Casa de Milagros

The Vision
Casa de Milagros (Home of Miracles) is a children's home in the Sacred Valley near historic Machu Picchu, Peru. It was founded by the Chandler Sky Foundation to heal the mind, body and spirit of many of the thousands of orphaned and abandoned children living in poverty on the streets of Cusco, Peru and surrounding towns.


The Issues
Over 3,500 children live on the streets of Cusco many abandoned by families that could not feed them. Malnutrition, infrequent bathing, and inadequate care cause widespread health problems including skin infections, bronchitis, tuberculosis, rickets, and chronic intestinal infections. But the loneliness and fear experienced by these children forced to live on the street alone are the most painful afflictions of all.
An eight year-old Peruvian boy spends afternoons in the parks of Cusco with other children playing soccer and shining the shoes of tourists. Laughing and running, he appears happy just like any other boy. But at night the boy is often found in the street gutter. With blue lips, body shivering and eyes blank, he does not respond to his name. Thousands of children just like Sergio exist in a world of poverty and misery foreign to many of us. But fortunately there is a way we can help.


The Solution
Casa de Milagros provides shelter, food, clothing, basic medical care, and education and arts programs that promote self-confidence and self-worth for children in need. This is done in a truly unique environment in which progressive programs are used to foster a healthy and positive consciousness. Based on the philosophy that we must start at the root of the problem, healing and educating children so that they can give back to their community, The Chandler Sky Foundation aims to provide positive long-term benefits to the region's social and environmental problems.
Casa de Milagros will act as a model for children's shelters in the future to be established in all parts of the world, providing a special environment in which children will prosper through education, cultural and performing arts, permaculture, spiritual development, and social and vocational programs, and most importantly, love. With its progressive methods of healing and teaching, the shelter is a model for self-sufficient children's shelters around the world.

The Chandler Sky Foundation aims not only to heal the street children, but to educate them so that they may be able to return to their communities equipped with the skills and the spirit to heal the area's economy. In addition to saving the lives of many needy children, the Chandler Sky Foundation helps to conserve one of the world's most biodiverse rainforests. Through teaching children methods of farming that allow the land to be used over and over again, there will be a decreased need for migration into the precious rainforest reserves that we, as a planet, need for survival. These programs, developed from a progressive global consciousness, place the Casa de Milagros in a category of its own.