How much a child's Life?

Dickens knew that children could survive on the streets, but he knew the cost. When as a social explorer he investigated the dark "rookeries" around Seven Dials in early Victoria London, he discovered unimaginable poverty and human degradation. Many people believe such things are returning to the UK, but if you really want to find similar conditions look no further than the Mercado Oriental in Managua. This enormous, sprawling market on the east side of the city surrounded by poor housing and shanty towns is the regular dumping ground of unwanted children as young as two years old. Once they are dumped these children are prey to every imaginable wickedness, from drugs to prostitution. It is estimated that 80% of street children in Managua have resorted to prostituting themselves just to survive. Glue sniffing, theft and violence are rife.

Spin forward and meet Berman, a confident, articulate 20 year old, about to set out from Nicaragua for Argentina to continue a three year chef's training. His journey has already been epic. At six years old he was left by his alcoholic mother in a Parque Central. He survived, sleeping wherever he could, eating what he could find or beg. Meet Manuel, who at the age of six ran away from an impossible home situation in the north of the country, clinging alone to the back of buses until he reached Managua, hundreds of kilometres away. Meet any of the children at Los Quinchos and you'll find a story of incredible survival and rescue.

Los Quinchos and its sister homes were founded by Zelinda Roccia, a passionate Italian woman who has made it her life's work to rescue unwanted or abandoned children and nurture them into adulthood. There are now five homes, four in the south and one in the north. Zelinda runs this astonishing enterprise of care in tandem with several other professionals, including Carlos Vidal, an educational psychologist, assisted by young men and women who themselves have gone through the Los Quinchos system. Between them these remarkable people turn children whom most would give up for lost into young adults ready to enter the world.

We've been at the Los Quinchos boys home for the past two days. It's set in a 14 hectare estate, just outside San Marcos in the lush tropical uplands south of Managua. Here up to 40 boys can be accommodated, eight to a cabin. There is a daily timetable which helps instill in them both a sense of order and a feeling of being cared for. The structure of the day ensures that they are constantly engaged with each other doing something useful or enjoyable and preferably both. As if to emphasise this, pinned on the wall of the small hall which doubles as a theatre is a list of rights and duties. If this sounds a bit institutional it isn't. The list represents a kind of contract between those running the place and the children. Duties include helping with the work of the home, looking after the environment and respecting your peers, while rights include the right to health, food and a family life.

The atmosphere at Los Quinchos is astonishing. There is a real feeling of a large, quite rowdy family. A lot of the time it is difficult to remember that all the children have had an utterly miserable, and often threatening, start in life. Sometimes you see it in the face of a child whose eyes suddenly go blank, whose face crumples when they don't think you're looking. At such moments you see the depth of despair these children have suffered in the past, before they came to Zelinda's loving embrace. But most of the time there is an amazing positiveness to the place, whether the kids are cleaning up as they were yesterday or having a ball at the fiesta as they were today.

I am not a Christian but the experience of Los Quinchos reminds me of what St Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians - "And now these three remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love". It is certainly love that drives the work of Los Quinchos. It is not driven by any phoney religiosity, nor by any theory of society. It is driven simply by the love and compassion Zelinda Roccia felt when she first saw children abandoned in Managua at the beginning of the Nineties. But unlike so many people who encounter degradation and misery when they visit foreign countries, yet forget when they return home or just send a few guilty donations to charity, she set about to convert that sense of outrage into a supremely loving adventure that has brought safety and a new life for hundreds of children.

Maggie and Kate have been supporting Zelinda's work for several years and on this visit they have agreed to continue and augment the financial assistance. This has been made possible by two large and generous donations made to the fund in the last three months. From what I saw during the past two days, it is money that will be put to work very quickly without any waste. Zelinda's will make sure of that.