Hogar Alba
An English missionary, William Morris, founded Casa Alba in 1930, after building many schools in different parts of Argentina. At the beginning, the house was in Palermo, close to downtown Buenos Aires, but the Perón government nationalized the building in the 1950s, and Casa Alba had to move to Longchamps, some 90 minutes from the city.
Today, the Casa is a “Village program,” a shelter for street kids where boys and girls are not separated, but live in family groups. This model emerged because the Casa did not want to break up brothers and sisters who came to the shelter together. 12 kids live in each of 5 houses, each house with a foster father or mother. A school shares the property, where kids from the shelter share classes with kids from Longchamps.
The huge property permits many activities, from sports to a farm, where kids herd cattle and grow crops. There is also a large picnic-campgound, where evangelical church groups come on retreats (paying the Casa and helping with the budget).
Hogar Alba has an Evangelical Christian orientation, but it does not demand that the children share this religion, and it maintains good relations with Catholic neighbors and with the state, whence it receives the majority of its funding.
Hogar Alba
Alfredo Cittadino
Rep. Argentina con Juan Justo
Longchamps, Buenos Aires
Argentina
