Moi pour Toit” in its pre-colombian cradle/birth/bower

The Quimbayas and the Tolimas are two native populations that lived in Colombia’s central region before the arrival of Critobal Colon. They represent the history of Pereiras’s inhabitants and the history of our Foundation’s children.

Talented artisans, the Quimbayas shined in the art of gold and ceramic crafting.
We regularly find in their sculptures a plane figure that represents a sat human with a rectangular body and a disproportioned head that inspires a suffering and a silent sorrow. Certain figures have their limbs mutilated, others illustrate a mother carrying a child on her arms.

Another great population of craftsmen and goldsmiths of pre-hispanique Colombia, the Tolimas often used in their paintings a simple and geometric pattern/design representing a figure with square arms and feet, on stairs and relied by its members to other identical figures, and so forming an never-ending human chain.

Sober but expressive, those indigenous motifs strangely remind the destiny of « Moi pour Toit » children : mutilated in their flesh and in their memory, living differently to other children, but children to whom, we, the world citizens, can but to tend/joint our hands in a solidarity chain.

Colombia: a Country of huge contrasts

The white. South America’s entry door benefits of a cultural, natural  ethnic richness unique in the world. 40 millions of inhabitants, black, white, half cast and aboriginal/native live on a land 36 times bigger than Switzerland, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, between deserts, the Oriental open country and the Amazonian forest and under the protection of the three Cordilleras. Colombia owns the richest fauna and flora of the continent after Brazil. Its ground over flows of raw materials, gold and emeralds. It is as well the continent’s oldest democracy, that of Simon Bolivar and his ideas of independence.

The black. Even though, since four decades, the country dies from its internal conflicts and from violence. 35,000 homicides every year enlarge the gruesome list of acts perpetuated by illicit armed groups, the narco trafficants  and delinquency. The state only controls 60% of the national territory. Guerrilas and paramilitars kill each other for the rest. High jacking has become the way to finance their criminal activities. The cocaine leave has tarnished the country’s reputation and facilitated to render violence commonplace/banal. Corrupted and non efficient, the Government’s politic  cannot but establish the facts; the extreme percentage of the population’ s poverty and  social inequalities: 57% of Colombians suffer from this taint/blemish this while a bunch of powerful ones share all country’s richness. “Our problem, is the excessiveness” comments, between black and white, the Literature Nobel price, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Pereira “Open doors”

At 2000 meters over the sea, on the flank of the central Cordillera, sits Pereira, the capital of Risaralda’s department. “The city with no doors”, like Colombians call her for its welcome, enjoys a pleasant temperature all year round. A city in the middle of the coffee region, between the sadly famous Cali and Medellin. Pereira has exploded and increased fivefold/quintuple its population on the last 50 years to over 800,OOO souls nowadays. Well known for the green of its hills, for its coffee and bananas, for “bambuco “,-its traditional and romantic music- Pereira is unfortunately also popular for its violence. A media of 500 homicides every year; a dangerous city centre at night; low, common and violent districts; rich and very poor that co- habit indifferently.

The Children's situation

They are 17 millions, under 18 years, to live today in this pounce-box. Out of which 5,6 million children suffer from material and very often educational poverty. 1.3 live in misery. The families they are born to are not only affected by poverty but also subject to the modifications of their values, unstable couples, one or both parents forsaking home. Their absence of responsibility is flagrant at the heart of the family unit poor on an educational and cultural level. Machismo usually destroys the thin stability. In this contest, the children don’t avoid bad treatment, violence and abuse. They are used for the rudest or the most degrading jobs, in a total indifference. 

Since 1985, there are 1.1 million internally displaced children as a result of the violence in Colombia. Twenty percent of these children have lost their families.

“The child should be brought up in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity”
UN Convention of the rights of the child.

… and their rights hoaxed/ rejected.

Nevertheless Colombian children are not without protection, in the texts at least. The Children’s rights declaration, proclaimed / published by the ONU and approved/ratified by Colombia, offers them a wide and new frame of protection. 1991’s Constitution recognises their right to health, to development and to protection. The Miners Code  concretizes these rights.

Still, in reality, the Government offers but a slim alternative to abandon and violence problems. Today, only 32,000 children are protected. 28,000 young Colombians  live in institutions. By far, unsatisfactory.

“Moi pour Toit” Foundation  was born in this context and supporting those ground laws.