Familias Especiales children enjoy their park

Familias Especiales de Santa Julia Billiart (FE), Special Families of St. Julie, is a ministry that goes door-to-door, person-to-person in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

In 1996, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Matagalpa, Leopoldo Brennes, invited the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur to support families who have children with disabilities. Sister Rebecca Trujillo and Marlene Hernandez, the mother of a special-needs child, started a neighborhood effort to find other families like Marlene’s.

Those first one-on-one relationships have expanded to a comprehensive network of services including spiritual and psychological support, various kinds of therapies, and small-business and job training for these young people and their families, most often their mothers.

The “mother leaders” in each neighborhood promote health education and acceptance of special-needs children. One mother remarked, “I felt so alone and afraid when my child was born with a physical disability. I did not know where to go and one day one of my neighbors told me she was a mother leader for Special Families, where there were other families like mine with children sometimes in worse situations. I soon joined and now I feel part of this special family and know that God loves me and my child.”