I think we need to do something.We need to help these kids.We need to do something to help these kids."
Welcome back to Smarter Every Day!
Every year I like to make a video about Not Forgotten, a Peruvian orphanage I work with. This year I wanted to make a video explaining the entire history of the effort, for those who may not have heard of Not Forgotten or don’t know the history of how it all happened.
So, let’s start by understanding the problem. There’s a city in Peru called Iquitos, the largest city that’s inaccessible by land. There’s literally no roads in and out, and for whatever reason, in this particular place in the world, there’s a lot of abandoned children, most of them boys. There’s abuse, neglect, and addiction, and the people that are supposed to care for these children either can’t or won’t. Statistics say that one in 12 children in this area of the world have been abandoned, leaving them open to exploitation and abuse.
Our story starts in 1978 when a young boy named Gene [Idlit] was born in Iquitos, Peru. Gene’s mother was already abandoned by his father, and Gene escaped the difficulty of life at home with an abusive stepfather by seeking shelter in local churches.
Fast forward to 2002 when a guy named Tyler Fiuque, a young college student, went down to Iquitos with a church group from North Carolina to visit an orphanage. He hung out with the kids and when he left and went back home, he wanted to help these kids and let them know that they were not forgotten.
Around this time, Gene was working as a police officer in Lima, Peru, and one day he was tasked with clearing out the street boys, or what his superiors referred to as “getting the filth up off the streets”. This didn’t sit well with him, so he decided to help vulnerable children. He volunteered at a local area in Lima owned by the same people that had the orphanage in Iquitos that Tyler had visited.
An opening or need arose in Iquitos, so Gene went back and started helping kids there. In 2006, Tyler and his wife Allison went back to Iquitos and met with Gene and his wife Patty. They started to develop a relationship and identified key problems that seemed to persist, even with the children that were within the care of the orphanage system there. They identified the key factor to breaking the cycle of abandonment - to center the care around the family unit and at home.
In 2010-2011, Tara, my wife, went on a mission trip to Chiquián Peru, and when she got back she said, “Hey, here’s the deal. I think we need to do something. We need to help these kids.”
And so Not Forgotten was born. We are helping the orphans now and I was like, “Yes, ma’am, we are.” Tyler came back from that same trip with a different vision: he had identified land to purchase and make an orphanage. We went and talked to key individuals, churches and businesses to secure the money and purchase the land. I started asking questions and my buddy CJ and I met with Tyler at a Chili’s to discuss the Not Forgotten project. At this point, they had the land, but nothing had been built, so we came up with a plan to build a septic tank for the guard shack at the gate. We submitted a video to the Project for Awesome and raised a lot of money for Not Forgotten. People started supporting Not Forgotten on Patreon, which made it a sustainable model. We got the first kids into the homes and house parents moved in. There was a transformation where the kids started feeling secure in their family and instead of feeling like, “the people from America are here, it’s party time!”, it was more like, “Who are you and why are you visiting my home?” We are now just serving dinner at Moises’s house. In Los Lomas, there’s a lot of childhood that’s been lost, so Gene and Patty created a playground-like environment for the boys on a 100 acre lot. It includes soccer fields, a jungle, and a lake, allowing them to learn how to trust and interact with people, instead of having a “fight or flight” mentality. Alporcar was also started to help transition the boys from childhood to adulthood, with skills and trades to help them integrate into society. Not Forgotten has Peruvian staff to ensure the best care for the 35 kids in their care, and they hope to open a third home in Los Lamos. However, the finances aren’t there, so if you’d like to support them, please visit their Patreon page at patreon.com/notforgotten. As a special reminder of the guard shack that never got built, a golden toilet was placed on top to commemorate its special place in Not Forgotten history.