Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: How Álvaro Transformed Children’s Ministry in Rural Latin America

In a place where farming is barely enough to survive and dirt roads stretch for miles, the heaviest inheritance children in this Latin America country receive can be described in a heartbreaking phrase: “We were born poor and that’s how we’ll die.”

Álvaro grew up under the weight of the prevailing hopelessness, working in the fields since the age of thirteen following the breakdown of his home, experiencing loneliness, and facing bullying at school. “Poverty wasn’t just economic; it was a mindset that told us we had absolutely no future,” he recalls. 

Álvaro’s faith journey began at the age of twenty, when a personal encounter with Jesus at a youth camp completely transformed his life. Upon returning to his community with the desire to serve in his local church, he came across a painful reality: children’s ministry did not exist, and the corner at church assigned to the children was in ruins. The abandoned room for children reflected the exact scarcity mindset he had known most of his life.

Convinced that only God’s love can change any destiny, he went door-to-door throughout his community convincing parents to let their children go to church. What started with just five children soon overflowed the room, becoming a ministry that today impacts more than 150 children. It even inspired a local church project where the children themselves, despite their own needs, learned to share food and clothing with others.

However, far from settling, Álvaro knew that to achieve a sustainable and large-scale impact he needed something more than good intentions: he needed further leadership training in pursuit of greater excellence in children’s ministry.

That was how he sought to enter Cultivate, a OneHope program designed to cultivate kingdom-minded leaders within their own culture and context who will actively pursue the mission of bringing God’s Word to every child and youth. Cultivate seeks to provide environments where participants can grow spiritually, relationally, professionally, and missionally. 

The major obstacle for Álvaro was that the upcoming program required applicants to be bilingual in English & Spanish, a language he did not master. After being rejected on his first attempt, far from giving up, he spent an entire year learning English on his own in his rural community. His determination paid off: he was admitted and became a pioneer of the program in Latin America.

Through Cultivate, Álvaro discovered that leadership requires vision, structure, and trustworthiness. “I learned the importance of being someone trustworthy and having unity of vision. It takes you out of your comfort zone so you can grow in a practical way,” he explains.

This training experience completely transformed the way he worked. He immediately applied what he learned to his own community, moving from leading local initiatives to joining a larger ministry network that today accompanies and trains more than 300 youth in leadership.

This story demonstrates that when God touches a young person, He doesn’t just rescue a soul, He can rewrite the history of an entire community. “God does not call us only to feed ourselves, but to do great things for others,” Álvaro says with conviction.

Álvaro is a pioneer of a network of local leaders that continues to expand across Latin America. Through Cultivate, interns and graduates of the program in countries like Mexico, Belize, and Nicaragua are leading their own initiatives—from establishing children’s ministries in rural and indigenous communities to building youth discipleship networks—proving that equipping a single trained young person can rewrite the future for thousands of children across Latin America.

The mindset of “we were born poor and that’s how we’ll die” is being destroyed daily as Álvaro sees cases like that of one of those first children, who went from being evangelized at his doorstep to becoming a main leader in the church and a university student. This is just one of the many miracles that continue to unfold today due to the determination of a young person who decided to trust in Him.