Olga Sánchez Martínez founded the Albergue Buen Pastor and today is president of the Civic Association of the same name. She is Mexican by birth and originally from Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas. The fact that she herself suffers from an incurable disease motivated her to begin to visit the sick in the hospitals near her home. She was moved by their situation and decided to dedicate her life to working for those who are most vulnerable and unprotected.
"The invitation I received from God called me so strongly that I could not resist going to the hospital to attend to my brothers and sisters there who were there alone, without anything and anyone, not even a single family member. I got the idea of begging at the speed bumps on the highways in order to buy medicines to pay for operations, and did so for four years.”
In 1991, Doña Olga began to provide support to amputated migrants in her own, because at the time there wasn’t a single local institution that would provide that attention. In addition, she supported the elderly that have been abandoned by their families. Later on, she was loaned the use of a house, where she set up and ran the shelter for many years.
“I began to knock on doors and try to touch hearts, but many didn’t open. They told me that what I was doing was illegal, because the migrants come from other countries and lack papers. Here in Mexico, no one valued these people. But my heart told me to not see them that way and that instead I should see them as my brothers and sisters. I became filled by this belief, and it made me continue fighting with them. And when I went to bring some of these migrants back to their home countries, I was able to understand the grand poverty in which they live.”
In 2004, Olga Sánchez received the Nacional Human Rights Award of Mexico. That same year, she began to construct a new shelter on its own piece of land on the outskirts of Tapachula. The new installations of the Jesús the Good Shepherd Shelter were inaugurated in 2006. They have been built by migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and although many of them lacked an arm or a leg, they all showed great energy and effort and were able to realize this dream.
"Doña Olga portrayed by the US-American artist Maria Allen-Koerner."
The Founder
