I have been asked by Perry to provide some anecdotal information and observations on the need for a small bus at the orphanage here, Ecuador, where I have volunteered for some years on a daily basis. The children where I help are "abandonados" (abandoned), some of them literally left at the orphanage, others left in the hospital after birth, or in locations where parents too poor to feed them know that they will be found by the police and taken to safety.

Our orphanage is located half an hour by public bus from the town center. We care for children from the age of newborn to approximately 5 years. At that time, because they are of the age when public schooling commences, those children who have not been adopted are moved to another orphanage where, either, an in-house school exists (usually taught by nuns), or a public school exists in close proximity to the orphanage, so that children may be easily transported to and from class.

Orphans are chronically understimulated. There are simply too many children, and too few adults, for them to receive the individual attention that is necessary for social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Ideally, of course, each child would be adopted at an early age, and get the tools necessary to grow. But, in fact, the opposite is true. Adoption, and the "normal" childhood development that comes with parenting, do not occur as often as we would wish. As a result, the developmental milestones that every parent looks for, and takes for granted, come much later for orphans. They walk, talk, and become toilet trained much later than children outside. More importantly, the lack of interaction with people and experiences outside the orphanage leaves them seriously disadvantaged in terms of social skills and intellectual development.

These difficulties have been well documented, and can be studied in an abundant body of literature. Recently (December 21st, 2007) the New York Times published an article entitled "Study Quantifies Orphanage Link To I.Q." The article begins: Psychologists have long believed that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children's mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up. Now they do…" and continues "[T]oddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher I.Q.'s by age 4, on average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage. The difference was large - eight points."

While all of us who work here, whether as paid staff or volunteers, do our best to love and care for the children, the nature of the facility, from the perspective of child development, is fundamentally flawed. No matter how much we love the children, we cannot give them what the "outside world" offers. There is one window to the outside world in the dining room. It is an endless source of fascination, or perhaps obsession, to the children. They see the cars and trucks go by, cows being herded or dogs running free and, most of all, they see other children. Those orphans old enough to speak play a game, endlessly, where they pretend to be in "la calle" (the street), and can do whatever it is that they imagine children on the outside might do.

The children, unless they are being taken to a doctor or hospital, never go anywhere outside the walls of the orphanage because we have no means to take them anywhere. I have solicited, and received, numerous offers of free admission to a variety of stimulating sites and activities: a small zoo, the cinema, children's plays and concerts, etc., but we cannot get them to and from the site. Perhaps more importantly, I have received offers from other schools to arrange visits for the orphans, so that they could play with "outside" children and begin to develop the social skills they will need once they are in school. Again, without a bus, the children go nowhere.

Ecuador is a very poor country, and the orphanage itself is chronically under-funded. There have been days when I have been asked to come out of pocket just to make sure we had some necessity at hand. Recently, for example, when a cook stove broke irreparably, I was asked to make a donation to replace it. This was an emergency, as there are always approximately 50 hungry children to feed. Seen in this context, it is clear that the $25-30k which would be required to purchase a van is simply beyond our means.

Our resources are so limited. I have seen children fight viciously over a shiny gum wrapper that was left on the ground. We're desperately in need of more books-these children, like children everywhere, love to be read to. Yet if the book is not "industrial strength", of cloth or heavy cardboard, it is usually ripped apart almost immediately by children fighting to touch and hold the "treasure."

Not surprisingly, this behavior creates great problems for the orphans when they enter a public school. The survival instincts that worked for them in the orphanage, including a tendency to act and react violently, and the "hoarding" of anything that seems to be an object of value are, of course, a huge handicap when children are suddenly, and without any preparation whatsoever, placed in a public school, and asked to share or "behave." To prepare them we need to get them outside, and to get them outside, we need our own van.

Numerous instances of the lack of preparedness come to mind for me, but perhaps a couple more will serve to illustrate. Recently I had the idea of bringing a couple of puppies to live at the orphanage. I wasn't sure if this would work, so we tried a preliminary experiment with a kitten. It was a disaster. Although the children had seen "gatitos" in picture books, they had never interacted with any living animal (other than the occasional insect), and they were simply overwhelmed and frightened, particularly when the kitten wanted to play, as kittens do, by "biting" and using its claws.

I had a similar experience when I arranged a party for the children. I hired a troupe of clowns to entertain them. The clowns were experienced in dealing with children, and I had instructed them beforehand to use no makeup, as I was concerned that some of the children might be frightened by their appearance. The clowns wore only their red "clown noses" for the show. Nevertheless, a number of the children were frightened by their appearance, and ran crying from the room. They had never seen a clown.

I write these words, not as an "expert", but simply as a person who loves these children, and has been with many of them on a daily basis since their birth. I honestly believe that a busetta, and the resultant ability to share the outside world with the orphans, would be the single greatest gift that we could give them. The dollar cost, in the scheme of things, would be relatively modest. The benefits to the children would be inestimable.

So, if you are interested in making a huge difference in the entire lives of many orphaned kids, then please contact us for more details.