Saturday, June 20, 2009

BUILDING CHARACTER: TWO “LITTLE GEMS” AT CASA VICTORIA


**Every afternoon at Casa Victoria, more than 40 children between 5 and 12 come for after-school activities guided by our young men and women volunteers. One afternoon, Esteban Jaramillo, one of our young men living at CV, was helping out two little 8-year-old girls with some math problems. One of them had a wrong answer and Esteban asked her to erase it to correct it.
“I can’t”, she said, “because I didn’t write it in pencil!”
“You could tear out the paper and write it again”, Esteban suggested.
“Oh no, I can’t do that because Rosa (pointing to the other little girl) will tell my Dad and he will beat me!” she replied.
Esteban went to the other girl and, in a kind voice, asked her “ Is Laurita your friend?”
“Oh yes” she answered.
He added, “Rosa, friendship is a very special gift from Jesus and He wants us to love our friends. Do you know that when you tell on your friend, Laurita, she gets a beating from her father?”
Rosa gave an anxious look at Laurita. Slowly, two big tears rolled down Rosa’s cheeks! She got up from her little chair, went to Laurita, hugged her and said “I’m sorry, Laurita, I didn’t know that!” Both embraced and cried together as Esteban watched in awe and thanksgiving for having been allowed to witness forgiveness and reconciliation, even at the tender age of eight!

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**At two in the morning, it isn’t unusual to hear all sort of strange noises on the streets around Casa Victoria. But the loud crash followed by disturbing voices, made Oscar, our brave young intern from Colombia, rush out to the front yard. With bat in hand—just in case—he heard two well-known burglars fighting over the semaphore, the street-light that a truck had just knocked over.

Oscar shouted at both of them, “Whichever of the two of you who is going to steal the stop-light, will have to face me and my bat! The stop-light is the community’s, and neither of you can take it!”

Several neighbors opened their windows and balconies to see what all the commotion was about. The two thieves, feeling too conspicuous to all the onlookers, dropped the stop-light on the sidewalk, and quickly walked away as they voiced some profanities at Oscar. He then rushed to the street corner, proceeded to carry the stop-light as he shouted up to the neighbors: “ Please note that this stop-light which belongs to you and to all, will be kept in Casa Victoria until I take it to the police tomorrow.”

The following morning, he reported the incident to the Captain at the neighborhood police station. The Captain was astonished to learn that this Colombian young man, not only was part of a volunteer group working with the community children for free, but had defended public property and was honest enough to return it to the authorities. This is particularly meaningful especially considering that a stoplight is worth a couple thousand dollars!!

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Casa Victoria Restoration 2007 Video

In October of 2007, seven friends (two from Newport News, two from Dallas, and three from Nashville) were allowed to visit Casa Victoria during the final stages of the physical restoration.  This is the story they heard and experienced.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Justo regresamos de Naranjito 235, el pueblo de donde viene Lenin Pavón, un gran amigo de Casa Victoria (vivió allá 2006-2007). Acá están unas fotos de nuestro tiempo. ¡Qué SUPER bien pasamos allá!

We just got back from Naranjito 235, the town where Lenin Pavón is from. He's a great friend to Casa Victoria (he lived there 2006-2007). Here are some photos of our time. What a great time we had there at 235!







Sunday, January 18, 2009

Hola, ahora estamos trabajando mucho en la Casa Victoria. Estamos construiendo nuestros programas: Club de Niños, Clases de Inglés, Deberes dirijidos, Visitas Clases, etc. También estamos perfectando nuestros recursos para que estén mas disponible a nuestro barrio. Entonces, muchos cambios vienen: eso incluye un video, que explica que hacemos acá en la Casa Victoria, también una nueva pagina web. Gracias por tu paciencia mientras trabajamos. ¡Ciao!

Hello, right now we are working a lot in Casa Victoria. We are building our programs: Kid's Club, English Class, Directed Homework Time, Class Visits, etc. Also, we are perfecting our resources so that they will more available to our neighborhood. That being said, many changes are coming: this includes a new video, that explains what we do here at Casa Victorira, also a new web page. Thank you for your patience while we work hard! Ciao!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Hi, it's me Charlie, one of the volunteers at Casa Victoria. The new year is here, and this website will be changing soon! But for now I have for you a video we made for my mom's 50th birthday party. Instead of asking for gifts, she asked her friends to bring money to support Casa Victoria! So, here is our video showing what we have been doing at Casa Victoria lately. Enjoy!