On one level, Vive’s story begins in 2002 with the arrival in Medellín of our founder, Latin Link missionary Simon Walsh, to teach in the Bible Seminary of Colombia.

The following year, he began taking groups of seminary students on short-term mission trips to areas affected by violence and displacement on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. And what he found were communities full of children, hundreds and hundreds of children.

Around the same time, a teenager called Leonardo Ramírez from the Colombian city of Bucaramaga was preparing to go the Seminary. Leo’s vocation was to work with children.

And me? I was back in Edinburgh after having worked for three years in Germany, convinced I was going to make a career in academia and NEVER go anywhere ever again.

Click here to donate to Vive’s work, training and equipping churches to minister to the children in their communities.