Marsh Children's Home - Mexico

Marsh Children’s Home (Hogar Infantil Marsh) is a government approved, non-profit organization created to care for and educate some of Acapulco's and the state of Guerrero's most underprivileged, abandoned and sometimes abused children.

Founders of Marsh Children’s Home, Eduardo and Jovita met as children when both were raised as orphans in a Latin American Orphanage run by Alice and Lawrence Marsh. After raising their own children, Eduardo and Jovita opened a space to help the next generation of orphans. Named after the couple that raised them, Marsh Children’s Home was born in 1990, to continue to help children in need.

In it’s founding years, Marsh Children’s Home had 30 children, sometimes 3-4 to a bed. Currently, 60 children reside there, each with their own bed, and in the past as many as 80 children were housed.

Half of the world's poorest people are children and there are more babies born into poverty than ever before. Despite major advances in medicine, science and technology, one out of four babies is born into extreme poverty and adverse conditions.

The Marsh Children's Home understands that poverty is a complex problem, and has more than 25 years of experience in identifying and helping abused, beaten and abandoned children using developing models of intervention and alleviating child poverty, vulnerability and deprivation.

The Marsh Children's Home's integrated development model is made up of interventions and education in four primary sectors:

• Early Childhood Development

• Health & Sanitation

• Education

• Nutrition

All of the children are taught how to care for themselves at an early age, stressing the importance of a healthy lifestyle, exercise, personal hygiene and sanitary living conditions. Marsh Home realise the importance of education in helping to end the cycle of poverty. All of their children are required to go to school and complete their studies before playtime or chores. In addition, all children are provided with healthy and balanced meals and are taught the importance of eating well and taking vitamins daily to maintain a healthy body and a happy mind.

The children that arrive are from 2 categories: abandoned by parents who fled to the U.S. to work and never came back, or indigenous children from the mountains of Acapulco, some of the poorest regions of Mexico. On arrival, many children are anemic and suffer from malnutrition, so immediate medical care is given. From there the children are transitioned into the healthy, safe environment that defines Marsh Children’s Home, to eventually graduate from High School with more opportunities available to them.

Over the years, "Mamá Jovita" and the Marsh Children's Home have received numerous awards and recognition from the Mayor's Office of Acapulco, the Government of Guerrero, Fundación Simi and many more. In 2013, Jovita Godínez was nominated for "CNN's Heroes". In 2015, Jovita was presented with the 13th Annual Award for Altruism at a ceremony in Mexico City.

With 30 years of experience, Jovita and her adult children (Eduardo sadly passed away in 2006) continue to build and grow Marsh Children’s home, with a new music program recently added, a computer lab prioritised to be updated, and a Job Placement Program under development for their graduates.

To find out more about the wonderful work Jovita and her team are doing at Marsh Children’s Home, please visit: https://www.marshchildrenshome.org.mx