Infante, preventing child abandonment

In 1988 in Cochabamba (Bolivia), the organisation Infante was set up. This is a private and non-profit institution which works with a clear aim: to provide abandoned children and children who are living in an institution with alternatives to satisfy their affective and social needs. This made way for its work with provisional substitutive families and its campaigns for social awareness of national adoption. A little later, a new and definitive step was taken: the work for the prevention of child abandonment. With this aim in mind, the following groups were created: the Women's Home (Casa de la Mujer), the Day Care Children's Center (Centro Infantil Diurno), the educational and informative programmes for the community, alphabetization, training and work programmes..., new projects, all of which are redefined day by day with the work which Infante develops at present.

However, from 1992 onwards, there has been special emphasis on prevention, especially, of the abandonment of children, a new programme being set up for this purpose: the Women's Home. Such a programme takes in women that have been mistreated as well as pregnant and socially rejected adolescents. It also cares for their children and tries to offer them the necessary support that may allow them to rebuild their lives, improving their professional skills, their own affective stability and the affective bonds with their children. Within the Women's Home, there is also a Children's Center where the children of the residents are stimulated, cared for and educated; it is also open to those children belonging to families of the area that show important deficiencies.