Nominated Child Rights Hero WHY HAS GABRIEL BEEN NOMINATED?
Gabriel Antonio Mejía Montoya
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Gabriel Antonio Mejía Montoya, Father Gabriel, has been nominated for the World’s Children’s Prize for his more than 30-year struggle for Colombia’s vulnerable children – street children, child soldiers and children sentenced to prison. Father Gabriel has dedicated his life to helping the poor. He has faced several attempts on his life as a result of his work. During a war in Colombia that has lasted more than 60 years, almost six million people have been forced to flee their homes and over 200,000 have been killed. Children have been severely affected. When, at the age of 37, Gabriel saw the street children living outside his home he founded the Hogares Claret foundation and its first centre for street children. Today, the foundation runs 52 children’s centres. They care for 4,000 children and young people who have lived as street children or child soldiers, as well as children serving their sentences in the foundation’s detention centres for young people. The efforts of Gabriel and Hogares Claret have improved the lives of tens of thousands of children. Father Gabriel fights for children that society has turned its back on. He says love is the most important medicine. Doctors, psychologists and social workers live together with the children. They listen to the children and take part in their daily activities. The children are offered education and therapy. They have yoga sessions and meditate every day. The therapy at Hogares Claret includes all children and young people joining the Scouts. They learn good values, to show empathy, be fair, not to judge others and to show respect and take responsibility.
The Child Rights Hero Gabriel with children at Hogares Claret in Medellin.
Father Gabriel, as he is known, has worked all his life for the poor and for street children, child soldiers and children sentenced to prison. This work can be dangerous in Colombia, and he has faced several attempts on his life. He once had to escape on horseback in the middle of the night when his house was surrounded by armed men ...
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elping others is something that Gabriel grew up with as it was in his mother’s nature. She always wanted to help people and care for those that needed help. Gabriel loved going to church when he was little and knew by the age of seven that he wanted to become a priest. When he travelled to the capital Bogotá at the age of 13 to train for the priesthood it was against the wishes of his parents, and they didn’t think he would stick with it. But his parents were wrong.
Helping the poor At the age of 27, Gabriel was ordered to travel to the Vatican in Rome, Italy, to work with the leaders of the Claretian order. The Claretians are made up of thousands of Catholic priests working to help the poor in over 60 countries around the world. After returning to Colombia, Gabriel was placed in one of Colombia’s poorest and most inaccessible regions, Chocó, on the Pacific coast. His task there was to help the area’s poor people. Gabriel loved the people
he met in Chocó, which was home to indigenous peoples and black Colombians. People whose rights had been abused for hundreds of years and who had almost nothing. “It was an important mission for me. Claretians are required to call attention to and condemn injustices. We see hungry, unemployed and people who are discriminated against and we suffer with them. You feel their pain,” explains Gabriel. When Gabriel left Chocó nine years later he had helped give the area’s residents something that had
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