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"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome."
- Samuel Johnson
R
anchito project started years ago when Salvadore Enciso had the
dream of being able to help orphan and abandoned children at a deep, spiritual level. But Salvadore was
afraid of leaving everything behind to devote his life
to this dream. He was also a little too attached to his
comfortable life by the beach in Encinitas,
California, where he used to live. He offered some help to some Orphanages
down in Mexico, but that's all he did. It took him
several years to slowly gather the strength to follow
his heart.
Finally, at the beginning of the year of 2002, he
started to share his dream
with some of his close friends. Everybody was excited
and touched by the idea, but nobody was doing anything
practical about it. Salvadore realized he could not sit down and
wait until somebody would join him on this project, so he
started to act upon the idea by himself.
His first step consisted of taking a number of trips down to Tijuana, Mexico to
visit as many Orphanages as he could.
He was mostly
interested about learning how they got started.
He found out that some people who started an Orphanage from scratch,
used their own homes and money to bring in a few kids
from the streets, and slowly people joined them and
helped them to grow. Some of the places he visited
went form 1 or 2 kids to more than 100 children within
a few years.
This motivated Salvadore to get started. By April of 2002, he contacted the DIF government office in Tijuana, Mexico and applied for a
license to open an Orphanage down there. Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (Integral Development of the Family) - better known by the acronym DIF (pronounced "DEEF") is the Mexican Government Agency that cares for orphans and children who end up as wards of the state. After going
through some interviews, psycological tests, and a
screening process, the application was finally
approved in the City of Tijuana, Mexico. From there it went for approval to the State of Baja.
After applying for the license, Salvadore's next step consisted of starting to build the project. For the next 9 months, Salvadore devoted 100% of his time to make it happen. He built the website for the project, contacted 1000's of people, participated in a number of events related to the topic, took a good course on child-rearing, sold his fancy Ford Explorer and bought a humble-but -functional Van for the Orphanage. He also bought and gathered most of the furniture and supplies needed to get started, saved and raised enough money to move down to Mexico to open the Orphanage.
In December of 2002 there were some changes in the state of Baja, Mexico law that could delay Ranchito's license final stage of approval for several years. Salvadore decided to move down to the state of Morelos, Mexico where it is very possible to open Ranchito this year (2004). |
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