Casa de luz
A light in the Darkness

At Lost Children of Peru, our vision is to be a House of Light (Casa de Luz) for the children, teens, and families who live on the hillsides of Comas and Carabayllo, two of the poorest districts of Lima. We are accomplishing this vision by operating a community center where our Peruvian staff loves, mentors, and ministers to the children and teens who live on the hillsides. We let them know that Jesus is the One who saves, the One who loves, and the One who provides. We offer them community, leadership training, biblical teaching, a safe place to hang out, computers where they can do their homework, and access to nourishing meals. We employ teens from the area that engage with our community centers and grow through our leadership and mentoring and invest back into their communities. The impact of this work naturally spreads into the community as the families of these children and teens see the lives of their kids transformed.​ Our desire is to establish additional community centers in Comas and Carabayllo.

As we build community relationships over time, we also intend for our community centers to become self-sustaining. Our plan is to establish local businesses that will create jobs for teens that attend the centers, and that will also eventually fund the centers. As an example, we recently established a bakery in our center, and we are offering baking classes for teens and young adults. We further intend to grow our relationships with churches and businesses in Lima, who will be a source of funding and volunteer opportunities.

We are currently leasing the space where we are operating our community center. We believe owning our own property will give our community center long-term sustainability and permanence and will enable us to develop it as a replicable model for additional community centers. There is considerable demand for the services our center provides, and each of the hillside communities in Comas and Carabayllo could support a center.

We invite you to join us in this work. You can help by donating towards the purchase of a building for our community center, or towards the monthly operating expenses, or towards the expansion of this work in opening additional centers, or towards building homes in Comas and Carabayllo! Our monthly operating expenses for a community center are $7,000. Our goal is to raise $100,000 for purchasing and remodeling a building. We currently have $40,000 towards this project.