Twenty-one documents. Take all of them.

Spanish · 24 pages · Matriz de desarrollo 2 a 18

Development Matrix Ages 2 to 18

Twelve capability domains — self-care, home, food, time, learning, money, relationships, regulation, decisions, community, work, identity — and what each one looks like at 2–3, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12, 13–15 and 16–18.

It runs on the six-rung ladder: I do it, we do it together, you do it with support, you do it, you solve it, you teach it. Nothing counts as learned before rung four, and nothing counts as ready to leave before rung five.

Ends with a per-child transfer plan, a twelve-question audit for supervisors, and a 16–18 readiness checklist that is marked by demonstration rather than conversation.

Spanish · 41 pages · Kit de duelo y pérdida

Grief and Loss Kit

The loss a children’s home sees most often has no funeral and no date: a parent who appears and disappears, a visit that was canceled, a reunification that never quite happens. This covers that, and it covers death.

How grief actually shows up, how understanding of death changes with age, what to say and what not to, three activities to do with a child, the family-visit protocol, and when to refer.

Plus the section nobody wants to write: what a home does when the person who died belongs to it — a child or a member of staff.

Spanish · 30 pages · ¿Qué digo? Conversaciones difíciles

What Do I Say? Difficult conversations

Forty-eight things a child actually says, from “nobody loves me” to “are you going to adopt me?” to “I want to die.” Each one gets what you can say, what to avoid saying, what to do in the moment, and when to stop handling it alone.

Indexed in eight groups, because nobody reads a document like this end to end at the moment they need it.

It is the most immediately usable thing we give away. A new caregiver can be useful with it on their first shift.

Spanish · 13 pages · Staff · Plan Individual de Desarrollo

Individual Development Plan

One plan per child, two to four goals, reviewed every ninety days against the twelve capability domains. Strengths first, the child’s own voice on the page, and goals written so that two adults watching the same Tuesday would say the same thing.

It replaces the one-page form in the matrix, which now points here.

Spanish · 18 pages · Staff · Manual de transición 15–18

Transition Manual 15–18

The last three years, year by year. Fifteen transition domains, real-practice tests, the network of five, the final ninety days week by week, the first week out, and follow-up at 30, 60, 90 and 180 days.

Housing is in it, which it was not before — and a young person without documents, confirmed housing or a plan B is not ready, whatever the other fourteen say.

Spanish · 21 pages · The young person · Mi vida. Mis habilidades. Mi futuro.

My Life. My Skills. My Future.

The same fifteen domains, in the young person’s own hands and own language. Roughly eighty concrete skills, each rated on the six rungs, with a column for evidence — when you actually did it, not when it was explained to you.

Ends where it should: nobody is at rung six in fifteen areas at eighteen. Nobody.

Spanish · 26 pages · Staff · Conectar y crecer

Connect and Grow

Thirty-five short activities for the one thing that cannot be taught by saying “be nice”: connecting, listening, asking for what you need, saying no, accepting a no, repairing, and belonging without giving up your own safety.

Each has an age, an objective, the materials, what the adult actually says, and where it gets used in real life that same day. Plus a twelve-week program.

Its most important page is the one that says a social skill does not fix an unsafe environment — if a child is being harmed, the institution protects, it does not train the child to cope better.

Spanish · 19 pages · Ages 6–18 · Dinero con propósito

Money with Purpose

Financial capability as a progression of real decisions, not a subject. Eleven modules from “spending is choosing” at six to a full simulated month on your own at seventeen — run six to twelve months before leaving, not in the last one.

Rung four is making a budget and keeping it in a normal month. Rung five is the month something breaks. The second one is what predicts.

Spanish · 23 pages · Ages 13–18 · Trabajo con propósito

Work with Purpose

Twenty-four modules from “what can I contribute” at thirteen to holding a real job at eighteen, built on twelve employability capacities — reliability, communication, initiative, learning, teamwork, problem-solving, self-management, professionalism, service, safety, self-advocacy, growth.

Child-labor law and safeguarding are on page three, not in an appendix. An eight-item check before any placement, the three things that get confused constantly — a chore, a formative experience, a job — and the rule that an opportunity requiring you to skip one of those checks is not an opportunity.

Ends with an experience passport, a supervisor evaluation and a ninety-day plan. Attending the punctuality course is not evidence. Arriving eleven times out of twelve, ten minutes early, is.

Spanish · 20 pages · Mentors · Guía de mentores

Mentor Guide

The mentor is one of the five in the network of five, and the commitment we ask for is three years, paid — because a mentor who leaves after four months teaches the lesson we are trying to undo.

Ten principles, then the limits in detail: gifts and money, transport, messaging and social media, family and history, confidentiality and what to do with a disclosure, self-harm, supervision, and how a mentorship is closed well rather than allowed to fade.

The photography rule is ours and it has no exceptions: a mentor does not photograph or publish the young person — not the face, not the name, not the story, not with permission, not on a private account. A young person’s life is not content for an adult’s feed.

Spanish · 39 pages · Everyone · Manual de protección infantil

Child Protection Manual

The whole safeguarding frame: code of conduct, prohibited behaviors, safe recruitment, the visibility rule, physical affection, bedrooms and bathrooms, transport, visitors, gifts, digital contact, peer harm, and the eight steps after a concern.

It carries the reporting routes for Mexico and Colombia — 911 and the Procuraduría de Protección de NNA under the Sistema Nacional DIF; ICBF Línea 141, free and 24-hour, with Defensoría, Comisaría and Centro Zonal — plus a per-site directory to fill in before you need it.

The photography rule is ours and it is stricter than the sector’s: we do not publish images of the children we serve, and that is not a consent question. A permission form signed by an adult is not a decision made by the twenty-five-year-old who has to live with the picture.

Spanish · 37 pages · Ages 2–18 · Kit de regulación emocional

Emotional Regulation Kit

Twenty-three practices, from blowing out an imaginary candle at three to writing the message you don’t send at sixteen. Each one has an age, an objective, the steps, what the adult actually says, and where it gets used that same day.

Built on a six-step sequence — notice, name, regulate, choose, repair, learn — and an arousal scale of 0 to 5 that belongs to the child. Intervening at 3 is far easier than starting at 5, and nearly all the useful work happens there.

Ends with the limits: when to escalate, and the page that says plainly this kit does not assess risk. The suicide script lives in What Do I Say?, and this points there rather than writing a second one.

Spanish · 39 pages · Staff & directors · Cuidar sin perdernos

Caring Without Losing Ourselves

Caregiver wellbeing treated as infrastructure rather than a perk. Load, relief without shame, emotional limits, not rescuing, the caregiver’s own grief, debriefing, supervision that helps, and the staffing decisions that make all of it possible.

We cannot ask children for constant regulation inside a system that continuously dysregulates the adults. Three levels of responsibility — person, team, organization — and a warning against turning a system problem into a caregiver’s moral failing.

Its sharpest page is the one on staffing: a roster that only works when nobody gets sick, nobody takes leave and no crisis happens is not a roster. It is a bet.

Spanish · 41 pages · Case teams · Volver a conectar

Reconnecting with family

Reunification and family visits. An eight-stage reconnection sequence from a letter to a supervised overnight, the visit plan, what to watch during a visit, what to do when a relative doesn’t turn up, and readiness criteria for the child and the family separately.

It refuses the two opposite errors. Poverty is not neglect — lack of resources alone should not keep a family apart. And a good visit proves nothing: two hours in a park on a Saturday and an ordinary Tuesday at six are very different tests.

Follow-up at 72 hours, 30, 90, 180 and 365 days, because what is being tested here is not a person but a whole household. Plus the page nobody plans for: when reunification stops being safe, and the grief of a second separation.

Spanish · 39 pages · Ages 2–18 · Crecer bien

Growing Well

Nutrition as a progression rather than a menu. What a two-year-old practices at the table, and what a seventeen-year-old has to be able to do alone: plan a week, buy it, cook it, store it, and solve it when the budget doesn’t reach.

The adult decides what, when and where food is offered. The child learns how much. Confusing those two roles is where nearly every mealtime battle starts. No forced plates, no dessert as payment for vegetables, no food withdrawn as punishment.

It refuses to give calorie targets or weight goals, and it says why. The WHO fruit-and-vegetable figures are included with WHO’s own caveat — conditional, extrapolated from adult evidence — because they are useful for planning a menu and harmful as a quota enforced at a table.

Spanish · 41 pages · Ages 2–18 · Inglés para mi futuro

English for My Future

English turned into twenty minutes a day rather than a subject. Listen, speak, read, write — and use, which is the one that decides whether the other four were worth anything. Every routine ends with a mission for the rest of the day.

Then the modules a young person actually needs: the airport, the interview, the supervisor, the bank, the doctor. “I don’t feel safe doing that without training” is on the work page, because a phrase like that is protection, not vocabulary.

We teach English to add a tool, not to replace Spanish. Punishing a child by forbidding their own language appears on the list of things we never do — a child taught that their language is a problem learns English more slowly, not faster.

Spanish · 33 pages · Ages 2–18 · 100 experiencias que desarrollan

100 Experiences That Build Capability

A hundred activities, ten to a page, each with an age, a duration, the materials, what the child actually does, and where it shows up in real life that same day. From getting dressed at two to a full rehearsal of independence at seventeen.

It exists to answer one question fast: I have thirty minutes and I want to build cooperation. So it carries a complete index of all hundred — number, title, age, time, capability — plus ways in by group size and by what you’re actually seeing in the house this week.

The page that matters most is the one saying what this isn’t: if you can’t name the capability and where it transfers, it’s entertainment. Which has real value — children need play and rest for their own sake — but calling it development hides what’s missing.