“Even if he has to walk around with torn shoes, they will not go without schooling.” Luis Adolfo Cordero said it through tears, but with a voice that did not tremble. A single father of two girls in El Alto, Bolivia, he has spent years alone at the head of a family that their mother abandoned when the little girls were still very young.
To stay afloat, Luis splits his day into two shifts: by day he goes through the neighborhoods washing other people’s clothes and looking for sneakers to clean; by night he turns half of his rented room into a small silpacho stand. Each day he invests about 11 dollars in ingredients and barely makes back 3, just enough to eat. Without a mattress of his own, with months of overdue rent, and after the Child Protection Office tried to take custody of his daughters away from him, he never stopped going for them. He made them desks out of cardboard boxes so they could do their homework.
When his story reached Facebook, the messages of support did not stop. “You are an example that many should follow”, wrote one user. His daughters summed it up better than anyone: “He is very hardworking and makes an effort for us.” 💪
