About Us
Casa Hogar Santa Julia is a nonprofit girls home located in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. It is run by five Catholic Sisters of the Dominican Order of Mary. To the girls, they are lovingly called the Madres. These girls cannot live in their homes of origin due to circumstances beyond their control.
The Madres and girls were located in downtown San Miguel de Allende in a loaned building until the owners needed their building back in 1999. Simultaneously, a woman who had built a school in the neighborhood of Santa Julia discovered that she had an illness for which she would have to return to the United States. She gave her school to the Madres, and the Madres moved 30 girls to Santa Julia.
Five years later, Casa Hogar Santa Julia was in ruins without reliable utilities, transportation, food, supplies, medical attention, or building repairs because community assumptions were that they were being taken care of by the downtown facility, the church, or the government.
When their plight came to light, public sentiment helped them transform Santa Julia into a safe home with enough to eat and educational opportunities to which they are responding beautifully.
There is no place like Casa Hogar Santa Julia. The young girls who arrive are in desperate need of shelter, food, medicine, education, and a safe environment. At Santa Julia, they find these necessities, plus an abundance of love, encouragement, and opportunities.
Santa Julia excels. The home not only provides for the basic needs of the girls, it also transforms them into confident young women who are learning to break the cycles of ignorance, poverty, and abuse from which they have come.
Santa Julia does not receive funding from either the government or the church. Since 2005, a dedicated group of volunteers has helped the Madres and girls through fundraising events, volunteer labor, and creating awareness in the larger community of Casa Hogar Santa Julia’s needs.
A support organization, the Santa Julia Advisory Council and Volunteer Corps, was founded in July 2010 in order to implement plans to sustain Santa Julia. The organization has more than 200 volunteer positions in the areas of administration, education, facilities, finance, health, marketing, and voluntarism.
The organization is lead by a Canadian, a Mexican, and a citizen of the United States of America in order to ensure that volunteers and donors from the three countries most represented in San Miguel understand how Santa Julia operates from their unique cultural perspectives.
What began as a dream in 2004 is now one of the most exciting responses to poverty in greater San Miguel and elsewhere. Santa Julia’s annual costs are approximately $100,000 USD, about $2,500 USD per girl. But those at Santa Julia have even bigger dreams for their girls, and are working over the next few years to provide for the home’s next strategic phase, which includes:
- Annual Financial Sustainability
- Capital Expansion
- Endowment Funds