Hotel Mitland supports the Los Cachorros foundation. This organization is dedicated to helping the most vulnerable children in Ayacucho, Peru.
Los Cachorros was founded by Alanya Santa Cruz. She grew up as a Peruvian adopted child in the Netherlands, where she never quite grounded. At 15, she ran away from home and wandered for three years through Utrecht where she ended up in the homeless circuit. With other former homeless people, she later set up the Utrecht Night Shelter in Self-Management (NoiZ). In 2000, together with seven
other adopted Peruvian youth on a "roots trip" to Peru. She immediately felt at home in her native country. Seeing all the poverty and the many street children, she decided to get involved with the homeless children. She wanted to settle in her hometown of Ayacucho. As in many Peruvian cities, countless children live here who, for various reasons, do not have a roof over their heads. Ayacucho has about 200,000 inhabitants. An old colonial city in the middle of the central high plateau of the Andes (2,750 meters). The area is considered
as one of the poorest and disadvantaged regions of Peru. In the 1980s and 1990s Ayacucho was the center of the Peruvian civil war, in which more than 70,000 people were killed.
Emotionally damaged
After returning home to the Netherlands, Alanya founded the Los Cachorros foundation. Three years later, the night shelter was officially opened. Since 2006, Los Cachorros has offered integral help to street children between the ages of eight and 18. These children often have poor physical health due to lack of hygiene, clothing and due to malnutrition. Many of these children have skin infections due to the unsanitary conditions in which they live. Due to glue sniffing and cocaine use, their airways and brains are affected. In addition, constant marginalization and rejection from both family and society often leave these children very damaged emotionally.
Safe home
Due to structural limitations, many families face a daily struggle to survive. Some children end up on the streets because parents are no longer able to support them. Socio-cultural factors also play an important role. As long as issues such as alcoholism lead to family disintegration, violence is a common method of imposing discipline, and machismo manifests itself in disadvantage and mistreatment of women and children, children in extreme situations will permanently leave for the streets.
Through street work, shelter, psychosocial support, education and access to health care, Los Cachorros accompanies these children off the streets back to family. Or to a future on their own. Shelter Los Cachorros offers a safe haven, where the children can blossom into confident adolescents. Los Cachorros ensures that the children can be children again and provides knowledge, skills and confidence for the future.
Mitland supports
In addition to the annual financial contribution, the board of Los Cachorros is allowed to use the meeting facilities each month free of charge, and the annual meeting for donors is also held at Mitland. Hotel Mitland also supports several other charities, including KiKa, the Ronald McDonald House and the Foundation Mag Ik Dan Bij Jou.