THE “HOGARES”
Organization
Our Board of Directors is in charge of directing the path of the Hogares Rafaela Ybarra along with our personnel and our Executive Director. Among their functions, they are in charge of organizing activities that make possible the works at the Hogares through fund raising and donations of time, money and materials. Besides, they identify special needs and the best way to supply them.
Executive Director: Sister Julia José Brécord
Board of Directors
President: Ernesto Valdés
Vice-President: Véronique Descombes
Secretary: Evelyn Vázquez
Sub-Secretary: Gladys Rodríguez
Treasurer: Luis Carlos Marcano
Other Members of the Board:
- Sister Aránzazu Labak
- Sister Petra Vázquez
- Michael Báez
- Andrés Claudio
- Maritza Hernández
- Ana Lisboa
- José Ordeix
- Norma Rodríguez
Blessed Rafaela Ybarra
Founder of the Congregation of Custodian Angels (Congregación Ángeles Custodios)
She was born in Bilbao in 1843. Married and with children, she knew how to reconcile her family duties with a life filled with charity and spiritual wealth.
Her union with God reached levels proper of saints. The writings about her spiritual experiences, as her numerous correspondence, reflect a woman who was filled with the love to Jesus Christ and for others.
Her charitable activity, dedicated in the beginning to remediate all kinds of needs was oriented, in the plenitude of her mature years, to protect and take care of girls and young women who, in the industrial Bilbao of the end of Century XIX, were exposed to the dangers of poverty and ignorance.
She promoted apartments to receive the girls and workshops for their education and sustenance. At the same time she created in Bilbao numerous institutions for the protection of women.
With the first volunteers committed with this task, she created the first residence – workshop, in which she left her own charisma and style: “sweetness in the means and firmness in the ends” “what love cannot achieve, fear will not achieve”.
Never get tired of doing good.
