The Home of Hope & The Clinic of Hope

The Home of Hope is situated in Porto Alegre and was founded by Mary and Nils Taranger in 1958. In The Home of Hope there is a preschool for around 120 children between the ages of 2-5 years old. The children’s parents are poor and many have simple work, but they live on the subsistence minimum. Thanks to the preschool the parents, not seldomly single mothers, get the possibility to work when the children can be in a safe environment.

For the older children, there is a possibility to attend an afterschool service, where the children be before and after school. There are about 70 children enrolled in the afterschool and they are between 6-15 years old. The children attend the municipal school in the area called Mario Quintana. It means a lot to the families to have their children in stimulating environments, outside of the slums they come from. In this way, the risk of them ending up in gangs and committing crimes is also often prevented.

At The Home of Hope there is also a crisis home, that is able to take care of children who require emergency relocating. It is a cooperation between the social services and the Home of Hope. There are usually around 20 children in care at a time and there are various reasons for the placements. Often it is due to mental or physical abuse, sexual abuse or that the child has been abandoned. Many of the children come from homes with parents who are addicts and mistreat their children or where the parents have died. The children stays in the Home of Hope around the clock until the investigations are completed and, if possible, with different family during the weekends. We work purposefully to ensure that each child's stay is as short as possible and also the possibility to return to their homes or to relatives, if there are any. Alternatively we try to get support families or adoptive parents. The Home of Hope has been of great service and help for many children since the organization was founded.

The clinic of Hope was founded in 1998, by Mary Taranger, to take care of HIV-infected children. Today there is room for 42 children between 0-18 years old at the clinic. All the children have been placed at the clinic after a court judgment regarding health care. The children that come to the clinic suffer from, amongst other things, mental illness, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, syphilis, HIV, and cancer. The goal is to give the children affection, health care and protection. There are nurses, caregivers, psychologists, and youth recreation leaders in the staff all there to help the children. Outside the clinic, there is a playground set up so that the children can spend time outside in the fresh air.

Most of the children already have a diagnosis or are being investigated for one, when arriving at the clinic. Several of the children have been taken care of by social services in connection with their birth. Many of the children have parents that are abusers and the children that are born are not wanted. Some of the children that come to the clinic are very weak and sick, and several of them have severe abstinence due to the drugs their mother abused whilst being pregnant. The clinic has meant a lot for the children needing health care and lacking parents being able to take care of them. During the years that have passed, many children that have been under care at the clinic have been able to be adopted into loving, often childless, families.

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