Friends, I want to share with you this beautiful story in the hope that it inspires you to help others and be agents of change.
Edgar Garzón was born in Bogotá in 1968. With few resources, his mother left him when he was just six months old, and it was his father and grandmother, who took care of him until he turned five again, he lived abandonment this time of his Dad, who left the house permanently leaving it to the grandmother who was already an elderly and sick person. She, an elderly woman could not take care of him properly or take care of him properly, which is why the young Edgar from the age of 12, without family or resources, began using drugs in the street as the only way out to his Sad and desperate situation. This led him to know the most painful and raw face in the world making him a juvenile delinquent for a long time.
THE MIRACLE
A really miraculous day, whose date no one remembers exactly, they knew of the Word of God and the great love they received through the message they shared, served so that the emptiness and pain that existed in them, at home, in that wife and daughters, will become the engine of the Foundation that today is Betsalem. And the miracle that was created through the acquired faith, the written Word, love and forgiveness, caused an extraordinary and wonderful change in them. This miracle was what managed to restore them as a family, and the spiritual and emotional transformation that rescued Edgar from addictions, made him a new man, a human being a source of pride for his daughters, the support of his wife, the husband and father not only of his own, but of all children and youth that have gone through the Foundation. This miracle of a new life was what prompted them to make the decision to serve society and somehow teach and deliver the hope of a better life to the most vulnerable.
With a new vision of themselves and the social environment to which they had belonged, Edgar and his wife decide to visit the sector called “Calle del Cartucho” in Bogotá, a place located in a central area of the city, which for decades, housed the lowest sphere of society, such as homelessness, crime, prostitution and drug addiction.
THE PAINFUL TRUTH
There they made a painful discovery, because they found that there were addicted adults, sick of all kinds of madness, with a significant number of children, who, like Edgar, were subjected to abuse, malnutrition, and very quickly become addicted. Children who, although they had their parents nearby, were completely unprotected, out of control and that environment represented the greatest danger to them.
It was here in this place, that Edgar discovered his call for the rest of his days: to help vulnerable and high-risk children, through the constitution of a dream, almost unattainable, that he shared with his wife, a vision that with the passing of days began to glimpse and that was created through a foundation that allowed him to gather children and young people in what began as a passing home, where they could offer the security that these children did not have at the moment.
“If you help an adult you save half a life. If you help a child, you save a lifetime” Together with his wife Laudice, and by the work of God, they started this beautiful work, constituting Betsalem Foundation.
TAKING ACTION
The first thing was to find a place to establish a home for rescued children. They received as a loan, from a generous heart, a house-lot in Bosa, Cundinamarca, who gave them the opportunity to live for nine months with more difficulties than facilities. Edgar himself made the first cabins with his few resources, and made them in wood. At some time in his life, he had learned the trade of carpentry and this was the time to use his knowledge to build the first beds that would house the protagonists of this story. And although those first cabins were built a little rustic and somewhat crooked, since they gave the feeling that they would fall in any
At the time, they represented the first step of a stable and safe home for that first generation of boys who would grow up alongside the new parents. Little by little they were growing and obtaining the support of generous people, until they managed to gather the resources with which to acquire a three-story house in the Prado Veraniego neighborhood, to the northwest of the city, which needed many things, but that it was built as the first and final home of all those who from then on would receive the benefits that Betsalem offers today.
THE IMPACT
If we were to tell the stories that have been lived in the history of this titanic task, much ink would be needed. The Betsalem Foundation since its inception, has housed around 200 children who have found in this house more than an institution, a home, a mother, a father and a family that helps each other. To date, 20 children live permanently in the home. There are also a variable number of children who come to eat daily, some of whom still live with their parents, but who lack daily resources in Betsalem find daily food . There are many young people restored from drugs who arrive frequently seeking financial support for books and school supplies, or specific school requirements.
What is to come is wonderful because the desire is to help many more children who have different options for different circumstances and we want to be a REAL AND TRUE option of life for them and above all a better future.
In Betsalem we look for generous hearts that want to contribute for the maintenance of the home, education, clothes and medicines for children. We are determined to give the home what is necessary for the development of the children that make up this family.