Penipe, a place to live with dignity

In Penipe, Chimborazo, social work began in response to a concrete reality: for years, the area faced endemic goiter and its effects on the health of many people. Added to that were a lack of specialized services, exclusion, and the difficulty families faced in sustaining rehabilitation processes.

Father Jaime Álvarez, who is in charge of CEBYCAM-CES, explains that the initial response was simple. From the center that would later become known as CEBYCAM-CES, community-based rehabilitation work began using accessible resources: sticks, tires, balls, and other materials from the surrounding environment. The idea was not to wait for everyone to come to the center, but to bring care into the communities.

Because there were not enough staff or transportation resources, a group of Responsables de Salud de la Comunidad was created. These community health coordinators acted as a bridge between families and professionals: they identified needs and connected people who required care with the center.

From rehabilitation to work

Over time, new needs emerged. People with other disabilities began asking for a similar space. A group of around twenty people, several of them with paraplegia, began a communal living experience that was initially intended to last two months. When that period ended, most chose to stay.

Living together opened another question: how to sustain an independent life. Small income-generating activities came first, followed by handwoven cards. Later came a larger undertaking: a shoe factory.

No one in the group knew how to make footwear. With support from Italian dioceses, secondhand machinery was acquired and a group of retired shoemakers traveled as volunteers to teach the trade. When the first shoe was completed, the project began to change not only the finances of those involved, but also their place within the community.

For nearly three decades, the factory created jobs and enabled people with disabilities to earn their own income. Education also became a priority: several members finished high school, continued on to university, and later found employment opportunities elsewhere.

When community becomes family

Over the years came couples, children, and new ways of living together. This is how the so-called Casas Familia, or family homes, emerged, along with other family arrangements linked to the project that follow one basic rule: the door must remain open to a person with a disability who needs support.

For Father Jaime Álvarez, that dimension explains the project’s continuity. “The strongest value holding all of this together is family,” he says. A community stops being only a network of services when people build relationships, make decisions about their own lives, and find a place they can continue to call home.

“The strongest value holding all of this together is family.”

That same logic expanded into other areas. Different initiatives grew out of CEBYCAM-CES, including a library with around 40,000 books, health spaces, productive projects, family homes, and a residential home for older adults.

The community response also became visible during the pandemic. Álvarez recalls that a staff member organized an oxygen bank and at one point coordinated up to ten tanks a day to meet the needs of the home for older adults. It was a network of people mobilizing vehicles, time, and resources during a critical moment.

“Deep down, people want to contribute and feel useful. I am convinced of that.”

The challenge of caring until the end

One of the current challenges is caring for older adults. The home serves 84 people and has 20 staff members. Its sustainability faces uncertainty because of changes in the involvement of the religious community that has taken part in its operation and because of the timing of public fund disbursements.

At the same time, CEBYCAM-CES is working on a day hospital and a hospice for people with terminal illnesses. The latter is still under construction and is planned to have 25 rooms, each with a living area and a bathroom adapted for people with disabilities. The intention is to provide care at a stage of life for which, as Father Jaime Álvarez explains, there are very few alternatives outside major cities.

Construction is progressing according to the resources available and there is no fixed completion date. That way of working sums up much of the project’s history: identify a need, find partners, build trust, and keep moving until a specific response becomes a structure that can be sustained.

After decades of work, the impact of CEBYCAM-CES cannot be measured only in buildings, workshops, or services. It is also visible in the people who studied, found work, formed a family, or learned to live with greater autonomy. In Penipe, disability stopped being treated only as a condition that had to be addressed and began to become part of the community’s everyday life. That change is one of the project’s most visible legacies.