EL ALTO, Bolivia (CNS) -- Daniel Escalante remembers the exact day he came in from the cold: March 16, 2000.
He was living in and around the cemetery in La Paz, more than two miles high in the Andes Mountains, where temperatures plunge as soon as the sun goes down. By day, Escalante and his teenage friends would do od jobs or shine shoes to earn a few cents to buy a watered-down bottle of alcohol to drink or glue to sniff.
Then two of the boys died, one of a liver ailment and one from the cold.
"That had a big impact on me. I decided I didn't want to die that way," said Escalante, 26. "I have buried friends since I was 10 years old."
He turned for help to Sister Doris Huertas, a Peruvian member of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who had befriended La Paz's street children. She took him and four other boys to the barren, windswept plain above La Paz, where the growing city of El Alto sprawls.
As Escalante remembers it, they rode to the end of the bus line, then walked and walked across the empty landscape until at last they reached a plot of land that Sister Doris' community had purchased. And there, brick by brick, they started building a home.
El Alto's Light of Hope Center is now a beacon for boys living on the streets in La Paz, but Sister Doris knows that its hold on them is tenuous. The center is home to 18 boys, with beds for about a dozen more. Some stay for awhile, then succumb to the lure of the streets.
"It's not easy for them to give up alcohol and sniffing glue," Sister Doris said. "Some fall by the wayside."
Like the prodigal son, however, they are welcomed back. And some come home to die. One youth, who always turned up when manual labor was needed but who had been gone from the center for a time, suddenly arrived on a Sunday. The following Wednesday he was admitted to the hospital, and on Saturday he died.
There are more stories of teenagers and young adults whose bodies gave out under the punishment of alcohol, glue and drugs. Sister Doris remembers every name, every date, as if they were her children.
"I don't know of a better example of how the Gospel is making a difference in people's lives than the work she is doing," said Brian Goonan, country director in Bolivia for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' aid and development agency, which helps support the center.
Sister Doris discovered La Paz's street kids when she began working at a soup kitchen and realized that the boys she passed on a corner on her way home were the ones who had come for a meal during the day. She stopped to talk and the youths, who had dropped out of school, immediately asked if she could teach them to read. She returned with notebooks and pencils.
"I found they had a great desire to learn," she said.
Sister Doris found a place where the boys could finish school by going to class at night and on weekends, and she sent them off in a taxi. A woman who collected material for recycling offered to pay the youths for bottles and cardboard so they could earn their fare.
Almost nine years ago, Sister Doris and a small group moved to El Alto to start the Light of Hope Center, now a small cluster of buildings on a large lot. The boys learned bricklaying by building the wall around the property as well as the dormitories, kitchen and dining room, and carpentry and sewing workshops. They built a bathroom -- airy, tiled and designed in the round, so as not to remind them of the bathrooms they scrubbed for small change when they lived on the streets.
Today, new arrivals receive tutoring so they can get a high school diploma.
Some go further. This year, Judan Cuna will earn a degree in civil engineering at the Catholic University in La Paz, where Escalante is in his third year of business administration studies. Another boy is studying medicine in Cuba. His friends at the center note proudly that he is at the top of his class.
Older youths provide guidance to newcomers. As the boys learn to care for ornamental plants and vegetables -- or the center's rabbits, guinea pigs, sheep and llamas -- they learn to care for and value themselves, Escalante said. When they see plants and animals produce, they begin to think of life as more than day-to-day survival.
It can take six months or more for the boys to begin to think about the future, Sister Doris said. Meanwhile, they receiv psychological counseling and meet weekly for a group session. No drugs or alcohol are allowed on the property, and those addicted to hard drugs like cocaine are referred to specialized centers for treatment.
While the soft-spoken Escalante seems like any college student looking forward to his degree, he still struggles with the effects of his year on the street.
It is hard to leave behind the violence, he said.
"Everyone finds a way to defend themselves," he added. "I defended myself by lying. That was my weapon on the street. And I'm still working on it."
Escalante's father abandoned the family and his mother struggled to raise eight children. So the young Escalante drifted to the streets, finding affection in the group of boys that lived at the cemetery.
He sees the story repeated in other young lives complicated by alcoholic or abusive parents who often leave the house early and return late.
"Older brothers and sisters play the role of fathers and mothers," Escalante said. "But they don't do it well, and the little ones don't get the affection they need."
Seeing other kids on the street now, "you want to do something for them but you can't always help," he said. He sometimes seeks out kids who are living as he once lived, "so they know someone cares about them, because society shunts them aside."
Asked how she supports the boys, Sister Doris smiles and says, "Providence." Besides CRS, individuals, several businesses and her religious community help with expenses.
"When times are good, they have milk every day," she said. Even when money is tight, she tries to at least provide a balanced diet.
As the center expands, adding ceramics and computers to the carpentry and sewing workshops, Sister Doris hopes to be able to support the boys by offering vocational training to youths in the neighborhood that is growing up around the home.
"If some of the boys become teachers, that would be great," she said.
At times, though, the struggle seems endless. As time goes on, she sees more kids in the streets, including adolescent girls with babies.
"The hardest part is when a kid fights to get ahead, but feels too weak. He tries and tries, but he feels he can't" give up alcohol and glue. He may come to the center for a couple of months, then leave and return, over and over.
"You know he's going to die, and there' nothing you can do," she said. "And they're so young."
But then there are the rays of hope.
"It's gratifying that the kids feel this home is theirs," she said, adding that the reward comes when the boys continue their studies and start making plans for the future.
"Amid such broken backgrounds and so much abuse, there are so many dreams and so much hope," she said. "When we haven't lacked anything in our lives, we aren't always aware of that. Even in the dead of winter, these kids never doubt that the sun will come out. They know how to fight. They never give up."
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