COST BREAKDOWN:

$500/month legal fees to protect Cintia's community from her killers ($6000)
$2000 legal reserve fund for other pending sexual assault and trafficking cases
$1000 transportation and housing for indigenous and Paraguayan students to victim advocate training event end of June
$1000 human trafficking relief fund for our new project stealing victims from labor plantations

This world can be terribly ugly.

A few years ago a Paraguayan indigenous child named Cintia was brutally murdered, and instead of conducting an investigation, authorities nabbed the first person offered up to them by indigenous leadership under extremely suspicious circumstances.

The DNA evidence collected was destroyed and never compared to the man in custody. He remained incarcerated for three years without evidence.

Meanwhile, no one spoke to the indigenous women in the community--who had observed the child's mother sell her for alcohol. Details in the file implicate the mother's boyfriend, who continues to walk free. Indigenous home in the sun, photo take on-site by Jen Finelli

This child lived and died in horror and ugliness in one of the most beautiful countries on earth. She had a human right to protective parenting and her own bodily autonomy, and an indigenous right to life under the brilliant forest canopies and bejeweled skies where she was born. Those human rights were denied by the very people who were sworn to protect them: her family, her leadership, and her government.

And now, Cintia has a human right to a full justice investigation that follows where the science leads, not where the powerful want--and children in her community are still at risk of victimization from her killers.

We have already made significant progress by legally demonstrating the errors in the government's current investigation, but to fully hunt and prosecute her torturers is estimated to cost an additional $500 every month for about a year.

Meanwhile, we have three other cases pending while we prepare a large June event to train victim advocates to accompany living abuse survivors through the process of obtaining their medical and legal rights.

We pay for medical and legal care for any survivors whose cases we take on, and in one case even housed a victim for nine months.

But we're a small charity.

In Paraguay we have three paid contractors who work for a minimum living wage: a medications driver, and two victim advocates in training. We have two part-time special projects directors, one American and one Ugandan, who volunteer or sometimes receive a small food and travel stipend, and we have two full-time partners, one American and one Liberian, who are both unpaid. There are two other volunteer directors (Gabi and Jordan) who assist a few hours a year with administrative functions, and we contract with doctors and dentists when we can. But in real every day life, it's Jen, Nathan, and Thomas managing five countries with Isabel, Lazaro, Melissa, and Tomasa. And that's it.

And we're spread thin. You see, Becoming Hero Charities creates "real life superheroes" by empowering small-time, ordinary individuals who've stepped outside of their comfort zones to take risks for others: from bringing medications to indigenous communities in the jungle and providing transportation for violence survivors to speak out, to stealing victims from human traffickers and hunting evidence against abusers, to supporting an orphanage and helping local communities discover sustainable ways to feed themselves. We interview potential "local superheroes" and find a practical way we can set up sustainable self-funding solutions for them--and occasionally, we work with them long-term. We have two major projects transitioning into possible long-term relationships now, one a covert project liberating human trafficking victims, and another a community development project feeding a small village in Malawi.

All these real life hero projects are paid for by imaginary heroes: BHC publishes fiction books and partners with authors to raise funds, while running education/coaching programs worldwide to help ordinary people turn their pain into power with life-saving skills.

But today, we're taking that a step further.

Because you may live in an ugly world, too. There may be corners of your life that need light, and hope, and joy. You may need a physical reminder of human creativity conquering form and failure amidst a constantly churning news cycle of misery.

We've humbly curated beauty in fragility so that by joining with us, you can bring much-needed loveliness and meaning to your world and the one Cintia left behind.

Thank you for creating a more beautiful world for all of us.

Bid on a More Beautiful World: In Honor of Cintia Benitez Montania

Auction Funding Medical, Legal, and Victim Advocate Support for Paraguayan Indigenous Survivors