It is Tuesday night, 7 p.m. Darkness shrouds the streets of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s 3rd largest city. Two Daughters of Charity cruise town in a flatbed pick-up. With stops at Plaza 14 de Septiembre, Félix Capriles Stadium and Heroinas de La Coronilla, a hilltop monument perched over this 800,000-person Andean city, their itinerary reads like an excerpt from ‘Things to See’ in a Bolivia travel guide. But this is no sightseeing trip. The Sisters have a job to do.

Loaded with 15 gallons of milk and sacks of bread, they hit all the main hangouts of Cochabamba’s estimated 1,000 street children. Explains 80-year-old Sister Mery Elko, DC, 40 years on the job in Bolivia, “The children are abused sexually, physically and psychologically…products of poverty, broken families and alcoholic parents.” No ‘milk-and-cookies’ upbringing for them.

Hooded and haggard, many run wild and sniff glue to escape the pain of their troubled pasts. Without intervention, their lives often evaporate as fast as the glue they inhale. In 1981, the Sisters intervened and started the program Amanecer, meaning ‘a new day.’ To Sister Mery, it means still more, “…love, security, acceptance, family – things they’ve never had.”

With 11 houses throughout the city, Amanecer cares for over 450 youth of all ages, from orphaned newborns abandoned in church pews to children of alcoholic fathers who abuse them to street kids fighting addiction to alcohol, glue and other drugs.

Regardless of the circumstances that bring the children under Amanecer’s wings, they almost always arrive wounded psychologically and physically. Psychologists are on hand to initiate their emotional rehabilitation. Staff cuts fingernails, heats the hot water and prepares the bed. A preliminary health evaluation usually reveals parasites, respiratory infections and vitamin deficiency, if not more serious health problems. And slowly, the children regain their strength and begin their healing.

Seton Institute has provided funding  to cover the costs of medicine and hospitalizations for these children.