Christian High Quality education is the hope for children and their communities.  Help us reach our dream and finish our new school building where 700 students, instead of the 250 that we have now, will be able to study, to get ready for a bright future.

How Amor y Esperanza began

The reason why we started with our vision and mission is because we saw that the education level in poor neighborhoods was very low, limited and bad. We saw that children and their families needed an integral development that would lead them to community transformation.

We started when we found 5 children locked in a small house, with a big chain holding the door; the oldest one might have been 6 years old, they were crying, all dirty, very hungry, without the chance of studying and with no one taking care of them.  We also saw children going to public schools at afternoons, with empty stomachs and we prayed the Lord to help us find a solution.

God gave us the chance of opening the first day care to receive the above mentioned children and 4 more.  At the same time, we started a bakery project; we baked bread and started giving sandwiches and a glass of oatmeal to 300 children and we saw them going happy to school, with food in their stomachs.

We have worked with day cares for 12 years now,  together with our government,  and have hadthe blessing to have almost 900 kids.

Later, we started a project for tutoring at afternoons, a service offered to the children getting the sandwich and the glass of oatmeal.   This made us realize about the huge need of giving a high quality education service, since their knowledge was very low and critical.

Again, we prayed asking God for guidance and to give us wisdom in order to fulfill this need.  This is how we started with the Kindergarten Amor y Esperanza.  Every year, parents started asking us to increase one more grade and considering all the problems the communities were facing, we decided to open one grade each year, since we saw we could be part of the solution to all the difficulties people were facing.  This is how the school Amor y Esperanza began, grade by grade, were children started to receive Christ centered high quality education, to be fed, to receive tutorings at afternoons and to see their parents having workshops in different areas, integrally.

Our urgent need / New school building

We are facing now the problem of lack of space.  Our school goes now up to 10th grade and we urgently need to have more space, patios, classrooms in order to complete highschool.  Our Education Ministry has requested us to have more space, more open areas and this is why we urgently need to finish our new school building and move there.  If not, we risk to be closed by our Ecuadorian Ministry.

La Planada, Northwest Outskirts of Quito, Ecuador

Nursery from Monday-Friday for 50 children.  We work offering the service of day cares, partnering with the Ecuadorian government, through MIES.

How we plan to use the new school building

Our vision is to be able to receive children since they are babies and educate them until they finish high school.  We are preparing our children so they become the best professionals ever and can attend the best universities / colleges.

We want to see our children walking in victory.  Besides using this new building for school and highschool, we aim to create a sort of college where children will be able to study short careers like Accounting for small businesses, Administration of small businesses, Computers, among others, so they can have a work tool for their lives.

We also want to have a Seminary at nights and weekends, so young leaders of churches located in the north of the city, and everyone interested, can learn and get trained spiritually.  We see the urgent need of spreading God’s Word, of discipling in order to reach a true transformation in the communities.

This Seminary will also be opened for Pastors, so they can study together with church leaders things that are extremely important in order to manage or administrate a church correctly.  We see the need of teaching:  Accounting, finances, Administrative skills.  Churches need to grow spiritually, but must also be correctly managed.

We invite you to join us in our dream, to be part of our vision and mission.  Your name is written in the dream called Amor y Esperanza.

Testimonies of lives that have changed thanks to Amor y Esperanza

With the permission of the mother, we want to present you the case of 2 of her children who in spite of very sad and difficult situations, are now conquerors in Christ.

The mother came from the coast, alone with her 2 sons.  She was cheated and manipulated by a man and got pregnant.  She arrived to Quito and being a single mom, pregnant, no job, no food, no money, she was thinking about getting an abortion.  God brought her to the door of Amor y Esperanza, she started working here and we had the chance of having some counseling sessions.  She accepted Christ in her life and decided to keep her child.  Now, this child is 8 years old, his name is David and he has overcome many giants in his life.  David is one of our best students, and always gets the affection and love of everybody around him, because of how special he is!!  He is in 5th grade and teachers constantly congratulate the mother because of how incredible he is!

David and his brother faced sexual abuse 5 years ago and their mother gives the thanks to God and Amor y Esperanza Foundation, since with all the work we did, both of them walk in victory and are  completely free!  Both children enjoy life and are getting ready to be great warriors and professionals in the future.

David’s brother, Jesus, is also an excellent student, very intelligent, always encouraging others and this past September, he got an invitation from the SCIVIS Space Camp, where he was nominated as a great helper for children of other countries, a child always ready for his friends.  Jesus got a scholarship from the St. Louis Lighthouse for the blind, an organization that blessed us covering all the costs for him and for a chaperone.

Please read below some of the comments we got from chaperones at SCIVIS Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama and from a brother in Christ who received us in his home in Atlanta, on our way back to Quito:

“Jesús is a camper who traveled here from Ecuador.  He doesn’t know very much English, but he has been a model camper!!  He has been a wonderful teammate and helper to others.  He has been using his Ipad to teach others Spanish and to learn English.  I never see him when he doesn’t have a smile on his face.  He is truly happy to be here!  He is soaking up every ounce of this experience.  Even with languages barriers, changes in culture, etc, he is a star! I am so proud of him and think he deserves to be recognized for his outstanding attitude”.  Pam Arbeiter

“ English is his second language, yet he still is a bright spot in the group.  The other kids flock to him and he always brings their spirits up”.  Matt

“ He is enthusiastic, always happy, friendly to everyone, helpful, listens well, is trying to communicate in English and doesn’t let that difficulty slow him down, he is teaching the students Spanish and is patient with them, he is very polite and a good friend to everyone.”  Beth Newman

“ I treasure my new friendship with Jesus.  He is a special young man, and a work of God's grace!  I am so very thankful for how the Lord has used you and your family to make a difference in his young life.  I prayed for you, your family and the school this morning, and will continue to do so!”.  Chris LeCraw

His teachers and everybody here at Amor y Esperanza feel Jesús and David are walking in freedom.  They dream to see their school being complete, so they can finish their studies at the Amor y Esperanza school.

Jesús wants to tell the world that he wants to be the best professional and that poverty or difficult and sad situations we face in life, are never obstacles to live a life in victory!  He wants to tell the world that with Christ we must dream high, since nothing is impossible with God!  He wants to see more and more children being blessed at Amor y Esperanza, the door that opened a bright future for him!  For God is real!

To finish these testimonies, their mother wants to say that without Amor y Esperanza, she doesn’t know where she would be now;  she knows she has family here, that she is not alone, and that God is taking good care of her children.