La Casa de mi Padre: Foster Care Program

Over the last few years, more than 60,000 children in El Salvador have been displaced from their homes because of rising gang activity and incarceration rates. While most are eventually settled with extended family or other caregivers, that’s not always possible.

Today, more than 600 children are living in government centers, many after experiencing abuse, neglect, abandonment, or family separation. Institutions can meet a child's basic needs, but they can't replace what every child truly needs most: a family.

That's where you came in.

Thanks to your generosity through Be Rich, our partners at La Casa de mi Padre have been able to grow their Foster Care Program, a new initiative developed in partnership with government institutions and local churches. At the start of this project, El Salvador had only 17 foster families in the entire country. La Casa knew that was a problem they could help solve.

The program began with a simple but vital first step: identifying and recruiting Christian families who felt called to foster care ministry. From there, La Casa invested in preparing those families well, training them in trauma-informed care and child development, so they could welcome a hurting child with both compassion and competence.

And the support didn't stop once a child moved in. Knowing that foster families need their own community of care, the program built a support network of counseling, mentorship, and ongoing connection, so that no family would walk this journey alone. Local churches became partners in the effort, too, opening their doors to create safe, supportive environments where foster families and children could belong.

Every part of this work serves a bigger purpose: showing El Salvador that family-based care isn't just possible; it's a healthier, more sustainable path forward for children who have already lost so much.

“We're grateful for Be Rich,” said Gary Powell, Executive Director of La Casa de mi Padre. “They've been able to help us launch this program and to see if this is a new way that El Salvador can care for children that are so desperately in need. Without you, we couldn't do this.”

Your generosity didn't just fund a program. It helped build a bridge from institution to home, one family, one training, one relationship at a time.