About Us

Who We Are:

Our names are Dean & Winnie Peters.  We are a husband and wife team here in Managua, Nicaragua.  We’ve been working with kids in Nicaragua on and off over the past 30 years!  Read below to find out how it all got started and see what we are doing now.

Here is the story of how our work of love began…

After the Contra wars in Nicaragua, Winnie and I had some toys to give to kids in Managua.  We wanted to give presents to the kids in the Managuan churches but they were already getting lots of gifts.  We were pretty disappointed.  Someone said, “You should go to the garbage dump, no one goes there to give stuff away.”  So we decided to visit.  We were surprised to find a community of about 250 families there.

We were told by others not to go because there were no roads, only mud and decades of sharp metal objects buried underneath.  We were told the gangs there were ferocious.  At that time there were no ministries there, nor anyone even going in there.

We whistled down a taxi driver.  His name was Napoleon Villalta.  He was kind of surly to us.  When we asked him to take us to the dump, he got angry and called us crazy.  He almost drove off.  After a few minutes of talking he reluctantly agreed, and charged us big time for his services.  When we got to the dump, we were stampeded.  AND we got stuck in the mud.  It was mighty bleak there for a moment, and Napoleon was GLARING at us.

After we had given away everything we had, the happy garbage dump kids helped push us out of the reeking, stinking, burning mud with huge billows of gut-wrenching smoke typical of a garbage dump.  I remember seeing thousands of buzzards, a man cleaning a buzzard he had just killed to eat, the pungent smell of burning decaying garbage and death.  I also remember hundreds of ecstatic parents and children.

We have started a few charities since then that are still going.  But when we came back in 2012, we saw that there were still a lot of needs.  Since our first visit, a company came and bought the dump.  Kicked all the people out and built them a tiny community of homes.  Which sounds nice in theory, but is just a bandaid to a much bigger problem.  Even though the kids aren’t allowed in the dump anymore, they still sneak in at night to salvage items.  They still don’t know where their next meal will come from.  They all have little hope for a better future.

We opened up a feeding center for the children.  We have been feeding them one solid meal every day since then.  We’ve implemented a ‘No hungry belly’ policy.  Which means that we feed every child that comes to us.  We don’t turn any away.  Right now we are feeding around 200 children every day.

While we realized that food was important to the children, they also needed more.  We opened a preschool and have about 30 children that come for free.  They also receive free meals and a quality education.

In opening our preschool and feeding center we have also employed 9 local employees to help us.  They have full benefits and health insurance.  They have been able to help their families and that has been a great benefit to the community.

Recently we started a Kids Church on Saturdays.  We invite the children to come to our house to learn about Jesus.  We want them to have good environments where they can make good choices and not be influenced by gangs.

We have so many more hopes and dreams.  We would love to have a boarding school and to expand our current school beyond preschool.  It can be hard for these kids to achieve anything when they are in a bad place at home.

We would also love to be able to teach parents and students skills that will make them employable by opening a trade school.

We want to provide a place for prenatal mothers to have the right tools to have a safe and healthy birth.  And the right tools for them to be able to care for their newborn.

We have so many hopes and dreams for Nicaragua and we can only do so much by ourselves.  All of your donation goes straight to the children of Nicaragua.  Winnie & I don’t take a salary from the charity.  I have a regular day job, that actually helps pay for a lot of our needs at here.    If you would like to donate, click here.

In 2015 we:

Fed the Hungry:
with YOUR help we served right around 50,000 home cooked meals