Scottish Catholic Observer

Fr Peter Walters has spent 20 years helping the street children of Medellin in Colombia. Through his charity Let the Children Live, and its supporters in Scotland and elsewhere, they have helped thousands of children find a new life away from poverty and suffering.

Colombia is a country that has been wracked by gang and political violence. Medellin is the city best known as the home of notorious drug baron Pablo Escobar, and Fr Walters admits to the SCO that, though the violence has lessened in recent years, the problems remain.

“We’re no longer burying children on regular basis, didn’t lose any under 18 last year,” the priest said. “The last few years there’s been an uneasy truce behind the gangs of Medellin. So they’ve devoted less time to fighting and more to more lucrative activities like extortion, drug trafficking and prostitution.”

A recent Channel 4 documentary described Medellin as ‘the world’s biggest brothel.’

“It’s a three hours flight from Miami,” Fr Walters said. “There’s allegedly still internet auctions of girls virginity, so there’s still a huge problem of prostitution and child prostitution. You know the street children we work with are very vulnerable, so one of the populations we work with is adolescent mums, many of whom have been previously forced into prostitution. Our programmes looks after the girls while they’re pregnant and afterwards help them get an education.”

He says many girls have followed this path to move into a more normal life but the resources required, especially to help them overcome the psychological trauma is considerable.

Programmes

The heart of Let the Children’s work remains helping street children but this has grown more difficult in recent years.

“There are fewer children on the streets there now,” he said. “The two most recent mayors had a policy of rounding them up so they’d disappear.”

He discovered, however, they were actually being taken to the city’s mental hospital were they were being held.

“There was a huge row about it,” he said. “And we do now have access to those children, who are being fed and educated but they are still in prison and very little is being done to prepare them for the world outside.”

The whole scale of the charity’s work now is remarkable, with around 550 in its different programmes. These include an education programme for children with special needs and a choir of local children.

“The next challenge is we are trying to open a school of our own,” Fr Walters said. “We have thought about it for a number of years. But now the Colombian education system is shifting from two shifts a day to a single one. This hurts both the children we work with who would come for extra help if they have special needs, or choir practice before or after their school day.”

The local authority are encouraging the charity, to set up a school that caters for those with special needs and the musically gifted but can’t provide any additional funds.

“We are aiming to raise a million pounds this year for this,” Fr Walters said. “Which is especially hard is that, as inflation is running wild in Colombia now, all salaries have been mandated to increase 7 percent. And the pound is sliding in value again which makes our task even harder. It is difficult but these children really do need our help.”

Fr Walters

Received into the Catholic Church 22 years ago, just after he arrived in Colombia, former Anglican minister Fr Walters became a priest a year later. He has seen the need to help street children over the years.

“I never expected the charity to grow in the way it has,” he said. “On the one hand, the more I’ve seen about the depth of the problem the more I have seen the need. But I have also been amazed we have been able to raise the sort of money we have. The generosity of people has been a real eye opener. As for his life in Medellin, he said it has become ‘a more agreeable place to live’ despite its problems.

“It does have a lot of attraction as tourist destination,” he said. “I have seen Colombia start to change its image, that is why we started choir, to show how much good there is in the country. And that has been underlined by seeing some of our youngsters go on to make a great success of their lives.”

One man he hopes will come to see that success is Pope Francis who is due to visit Colombia early next year.

“Well St John Paul came to Medellin so we shall see, we shall see,” he said. “The Pope says we should go out to the marginalised and that is the work of Let the Children Live and always has been. So hopefully during this year of mercy people will see our work as implementing Holy Father’s request.”

—Find out more at http://www.letthechildrenlive.org/