The Cubs

Hotel Mitland supports the Los Cachorros foundation. This organization is committed to the most vulnerable children in Peruvian Ayacucho.

Hotel Mitland supports the Los Cachorros foundation. This organization is committed to the most vulnerable children in Ayacucho, Peru.

Los Cachorros was founded by Alanya Santa Cruz. She grew up as a Peruvian adoptee in the Netherlands, where she never fully settled. At the age of 15, she ran away from home and wandered through Utrecht for three years, ending up in the homeless circuit. Later, with other former homeless people, she established the Utrecht Night Shelter in Self-Management (NoiZ). In 2000, Alanya, along with seven other adopted Peruvian youths, made a 'roots trip' to Peru. She immediately felt at home in her birth country. Seeing all the poverty and many street children, she decided to dedicate herself to the homeless children. She wanted to settle in her birthplace Ayacucho. Like in many Peruvian cities, countless children here have no roof over their heads for various reasons. Ayacucho has about 200,000 inhabitants. An old colonial city in the middle of the central highlands of the Andes (2750 meters). The area is considered one of the poorest and most 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 been providing comprehensive assistance to street children between eight and 18 years old. These children often have poor physical health due to lack of hygiene, clothing, and malnutrition. Many of these children have skin infections because of the unhygienic conditions in which they live. Due to glue sniffing and cocaine use, their respiratory systems and brains are affected. Moreover, these children are often emotionally very damaged due to constant marginalization and rejection by both family and society.

Safe haven

Due to structural limitations, many families have to fight a daily battle to survive. Some children end up on the streets because the parents are no longer able to support them. Social and cultural factors also play an important role. As long as issues like alcoholism lead to family disintegration, violence is a common method for imposing discipline, and machismo manifests in the disadvantage and abuse of women and children, children in extreme situations will definitively go to the streets.

Through street work, shelter, psychosocial help, education, and access to healthcare, Los Cachorros guides these children from the street back to family. Or to a future on their own. Shelter house Los Cachorros offers a safe haven where the children can flourish 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 free of charge every month, 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 Stichting Mag Ik Dan Bij Jou.