World Villages for Children and the Sisters of Mary have rescued and transformed the lives of more than 170,000 of the worlds poorest children from the most desperate situations. There are schools in 6 countries - Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Philippines, and Tanzania. Currently, the Sisters are helping 20,000 children break free from a life of poverty by providing them with a strong education, faith formation, a safe place to live, food, medical care and hope for a brighter future.

Here is the story of one of the children. This past year on a trip to identify the poorest of the poor the sisters went recruiting in Guerrero Mexico. The Sisters go recruiting to identify students to help. This is one girl who the Sisters met and Marias story is so much like so many of our students. She has a father who abandoned her as an infant. Her mother makes on a good day when she is working about $5 a day. Half of their income goes to paying a sort of mortgage on their house. They live in a community of houses built in a little area on what is essentially a homeless camp.

Sister was asking Maria what to do want to be when you grew up? Why do you want to come to our school? And Maria started crying and she said I dont know what I want to be when I grow up. I have never thought to dream about things like that. I live to survive another day.

Here is Maria in the Girlstown in Chalco, Mexico where she is living with the Sisters pf Mary and 3, 400 girls. She is living in a safe place, getting 3 meals a day, and learning so she can lift herself and her family out of poverty.

So now Maria can study accounting, information technology, dressmaking, textile manufacturing, culinary arts things that will allow her to either follow a vocational tract and get a job straight out of Villa De Los Ninas in Chalco or go study higher education with a scholarship.