Casa Hogar

Conor Bertrand
12/21/09

      Casa Hogar is a Catholic-run shelter for girls between the ages of 3 and 18 located in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.  The girls that live there have either been orphaned or have been placed there as relief from neglectful or abusive parents.  The house runs entirely on donations made by individuals and separate organizations, and one of those is an on-campus organization at A&M called Full Hearts.  This organization takes trips to the house every 3 weeks or so in order to make donations and teach English to the girls. These trips are made with the hopes that this will give them an advantage for a job and/or schooling when their time at Casa Hogar is through.

      Full Hearts was co-founded by former A&M rugby player Greg Kwedar, and the organization still works very closely with the rugby team today.  Once a semester we take a group of about five players and head down to play with the girls and assist in English classes being taught by Full Hearts.  We are usually put in charge of active games that the girls may play such as capture the flag, different tag games, soccer tournaments etc.  This is a great time for the players to get to know the girls on a more personal level, and talk to them about their dreams and aspirations.  It is really a rewarding time because the girls get to ask us what we want to be and what our ambitions are, and we always do our best to convey that so much more is possible than they could imagine.  It is really an astonishing change since four years ago; they used to have no idea what they wanted to be, but now every girl there has a goal that she wants to obtain, and the belief that she can obtain it.  A lot of the girls that we have talked to have just as high hopes as we ever did, with many of them wanting to be engineers, professors, scientists, mathematicians and so on.

      On one day per trip, the Full Hearts people take us to Las Colonias, or the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city.  These are very run down communities, with ramshackle houses built with whatever the people living there can find.  This is always a very humbling experience because we see that there is always much more to do and many more ways to help those that are less fortunate than ourselves.  At the same time, however, when we visit and play with and teach the families in this community it is made so obvious that these people are no different from ourselves.  They have simply been placed into circumstances that offer very few alternatives or hope of improvement. 

      When we take our trips down to Casa Hogar, we go knowing that the greatest thing that we have to offer these girls is hope.  They have been placed in a situation where it takes dreams and the belief in oneself to accomplish those dreams that makes all the difference, and that is what Full Hearts and the A&M rugby team tries to instill in the girls and the people of Las Colonias.  We in turn benefit from the knowledge that these people that seem so far away are within the reach of our helping hand, and are no different from ourselves.  These girls like to play hopscotch and jump rope and play sports and do all of the things that American children grow up doing.  They laugh at the same jokes and smile in the same language. The love of life that these girls continue to have despite their circumstances is the most rewarding gift we can ask for.  Whether you speak Spanish or not, you can’t help but melt when all a little girl wants is a hug.