Our Story

Our Story

One Heart Brasilito was founded in 2021 when Aida Cortes felt a calling to come to Brasilito to help the children of this community. With total faith, Aida and her husband Johnny picked up their lives and moved to the slums of Brasilito. Here, Aida and her husband Johnny have built their home and their lives around the idea of providing a safe place for the children in the community to play, eat, study, and learn about God.

Brasilito was exactly where Aida needed to be. After an earthquake destroyed the public school in 2012, the community’s children were forced to hold classes in the local community center until a new school facility was constructed in 2023. This limited education in a community filled with primarily single-parent working families have left a generation of children without adequate education and care. Additionally, COVID further pushed these children behind, as crime and drugs affected an tourism-focused economy. Aida’s vision was to keep children out of the street by providing a safe place for them to be able to gather and learn.

Simply through word of mouth, Aida now provides free lunch and classes for about 35 children aged 3 to 17, every weekday.  For many of these children, this meal is the only consistent and properly balanced nutritional meal they receive. By using her training as a schoolteacher, she provides an educational lesson, as well as a Bible lesson to help provide for the children’s spiritual education.