There's a photo from a recent tournament in Peru that we can't stop looking at.
A few dozen kids under a blue shade canopy, packed shoulder to shoulder on a turf field. A Peruvian flag on one side, a hand-painted banner reading OLIMPIADAS DEPORTIVAS on the other. Somebody in a full eagle mascot costume. And in the front rows, a whole group of kids wearing red and white stripes with New Wave Construction across the chest.
We're used to seeing the New Wave name on trucks, job sites, and signs around Southern Utah. Seeing it on a soccer team thousands of miles away was a little different.
Here's how it got there.
Meet Sagrada Familia
The team is part of Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia, a children's community in the district of Ventanilla, on the outskirts of Lima, Peru.
It was founded in 1988 by Miguel Rodríguez-Candia, and what they've built over the years is pretty incredible:
- 250 children live there right now, from one month old to eighteen
- 1,200 children are educated and mentored through the community, including kids from surrounding neighborhoods
- More than 2,500 children have grown up there since it opened
- 200+ young people from the community have gone on to higher education
- It operates its own school, vocational workshops, and on-site medical clinic
Their stated goal is simple: to "put our grain of sand to make the world a better place for children."
The community also organizes around three values written in Quechua:
Allinta Munay — Love well
Allinta Yachay — Learn well
Allinta Ruway — Do it well
We can get behind that.
More than a place to live
Sagrada Familia is often described as an orphanage, but what they do goes well beyond providing children with a place to live.
The community supports children who come from a variety of difficult circumstances. In addition to housing, they provide education, medical care, vocational training, mentorship, and opportunities for kids to build a future for themselves.
They also educate and support children from families throughout the surrounding neighborhoods.
When you look at the school, workshops, medical clinic, sports programs, and everything else happening there, you start to understand the scale of what Sagrada Familia has built over nearly four decades.
Last year, we got the chance to see some of it ourselves.
Our trip to Peru
A group from New Wave traveled to Sagrada Familia with something pretty simple in mind: they had work that needed to be done, and construction happens to be something we know a little bit about.
So we brought tools and got to work.
Our crews spend their working lives pouring concrete, framing walls, and fixing what's broken. A children's community housing 250 kids has buildings, and buildings always need something.
We were able to spend our time there working on their property and helping with construction projects that needed to get done.
They needed help. We knew how to help. So we helped.
But getting to meet the kids and the people who have dedicated so much of their lives to this community made the trip mean a lot more to our team than we expected.
Everybody who went came home grateful for the experience.
Then came the jerseys
More recently, we got another opportunity to help.
This time, it wasn't construction.
Sagrada Familia has kids who compete in the Olimpiadas Deportivas, and we had the chance to sponsor the team and provide full kits — jerseys, shorts, socks, and caps.
We said yes.
A while later, the pictures started coming in.
Kids lined up together. Kids playing soccer. Kids smiling for team photos. A whole group wearing matching red and white New Wave jerseys thousands of miles away from Southern Utah.
That was pretty cool to see.
Our logo ended up on the front, which is how sponsorships work, but that's not really the part we're excited about.
A bunch of kids got to put on matching uniforms, represent their team, and go compete together.
We're just glad we got to play a small part in it.
How you can help
One reason we're sharing this story is because we'd love for more people to know about Sagrada Familia and the work they're doing.
If you'd like to help, Sagrada Familia accepts donations directly.
→ Donate to Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia
A few things worth knowing:
- The site is in Spanish. Most browsers can translate it automatically.
- They accept PayPal or direct bank transfer, and the account details are listed on their donation page.
- You can sponsor a house. Their padrino (godparent) program allows supporters to help with specific needs for one of the children's houses, including bedding, furniture, games, food, and activities like trips to the beach or a museum.
- US donors can give through The Forgotten International, an organization that partners with Sagrada Familia. Their instructions are to specify that your donation is for Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia.
[CONFIRM — verify the current process and tax-deductibility before publishing.] - They welcome volunteers. You can learn more directly through their website.
Not in a position to give right now? Sharing their story with somebody else helps too.
Why a construction company is telling you this
Because we'd rather be the kind of company where somebody can walk into the office with an idea like this and get a yes.
Last year, that meant getting on a plane, bringing our tools, and helping work on some buildings.
This time, it meant putting a soccer team in uniforms.
We're grateful we got to be a small part of both.
Most of what we do happens right here in Southern Utah. This is our home, and it's the community we're building in every day. But every once in a while, an opportunity comes along to help somewhere else.
When we can, we'd like to.
If you want to see what we're building closer to home, that's here. And if you know a kids' team or organization here in Southern Utah that New Wave should know about, we're listening.
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