My name is Francy Castillo.

I am 41 years old, I am a single mother and I have two children, Mateo, 20, and David, 17. I am the youngest of five brothers from a traditional family.

At the age of 14 my father, who was almost everything in my world, left home, although he never completely abandoned me.

At the age of 16 I went to live alone and got a job in a neighborhood hardware store.

My dream, which was to be a great doctor, gradually faded away.

At the age of 20 I got pregnant with Mateo and at six months pregnant I was left alone.

At that moment my story really begins.

Two years later David was born.

I lived with someone and when David was two years old I began to study payroll settlement and social benefits, at the National Learning Service (SENA).

David's dad left the house and he doesn't forget to see me standing at the window crying, while his dad left.

With difficulty I finished studying;

during the day I left my children in a family welfare garden.

When David was six years old I lost my job.

The months began to pass and I did not get anything.

In an effort not to stop paying rent, I made the worst mistake, which was to use all my savings to buy a piece of land in Soacha, without documents.

There was no electricity or gas and I ended up cooking with firewood, something I never imagined.

Not to mention a radio or television.

There were a lot of people there building their house, so I enrolled Mateo and David in school and started working with a foreman, even though I didn't know how to nail a nail.

The important thing was to have a job and cover the expenses.

I remember my swollen hands from the hard manual labor and from constantly pulling myself with the wires.

There was a problem with the land, because we discovered that it was a farm that the seller of the land had invaded and subdivided.

The man was assassinated and the police arrived.

That morning I fled with my children and the few things I had were left behind.

I was literally on the street.

I didn't know what to do or where to run, so that night I stayed with my children in a motel, and I cried asking God to help me.

I asked Mrs. Maria, the only person I knew, to take care of my children.

I took the 30,000 pesos that I had in my pocket, bought some peanut nougat candies, and made the most difficult decision up to that moment: to start selling candies on the buses.

It took me an hour to swallow my shame and get on the first bus.

But it was either that or spend the night on the street with Mateo and David.

That day I brought food to my boys and I was able to pay for the hotel.

We lived like this for more than four months.

It's hard to live with the day.

I am a woman organized to work and I set myself a schedule from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon.

One day I had to go out to work with my children because María got sick and she had no one to leave them with.

Taking them out on that grind devastated me and made me feel miserable.

That afternoon I got on a bus in the Unicentro sector, I remember it well, I put my children in the back seat of the bus, I stood in front of the passengers and when I tried to speak I started crying.

David yelled from his seat, “Mom, why are you crying?”

They all turned to see him.

I wouldn't stop crying.

At that moment they began to take money from their pockets and everyone bought my sweets.

I was able to pay for the night in the hotel and food.

Another day, it was four in the afternoon and he hadn't raised money to pay for the night.

I thought we would have to spend the night at the Transport Terminal.

I thought twenty thousand things.

I was wondering why they didn't call me from a job, because just as I worked on the buses, I handed out resumes.

That night I thought I couldn't go on like this.

I asked God not to let me fall.

I saved as much as I could and after a month I rented an apartment and bought two beds.

There was no stove, no mattress, but I got some thick blankets and that's how we slept.

María was no longer able to take care of my children due to health problems, so she paid a lady who gave them lunch and took care of them in the afternoon.

I took time to take them to the park and I instilled in them the habit of reading;

they took a liking to being in the library.

The lady noticed, she picked them up at school and left them the rest of the day in the library.

One day she forgot to feed them.

I picked them up full of rage.

Mateo said that he would leave everything done for them and he would warm it up and assume the responsibility of taking care of his brother.

I kept working in fear, imagining a thousand things, but trying to get ahead.

Three years passed.

I kept working on the buses, paying rent, services, food, sending some money to my mother and filling out resumes.

Finally, at the Paul VI hospital in Bosa, they interviewed me the same day I handed in my CV, and I started working on February 5, 2016. I was happy even though I worked for the provision of services, which is one of the most terrible contracts that can exist. .

He had stopped working on the street, earned 1,140,000 pesos and paid 217,000 for health, pension and ARL.

At the beginning of the pandemic I continued in Bosa but in a larger hospital.

I changed my apartment to a nicer place and I did magic with my salary, because I helped my parents.

The boys were virtual, we only had a computer and the only phone was mine.

Mateo graduated from school in 2021 with a very good score, above 92% of the students in Colombia.

He wanted to get into college, and I didn't want him to go to waste.

A doctor gave him the registration fee to apply to the National for mechatronic engineering, because his goal was to study astrophysics and get to work at NASA or Tesla.

It showed up and didn't happen.

A bit frustrated, he applied to a government program called Jóvenes a la U, for electronic engineering, to compete for one of the three places, among 700 applicants.

He did very well and in 2021 he began to study at the Cooperative University.

Last year he participated in a contest between universities with a car-type robot and a program that he developed to manage it from his cell phone, via

.

He entered a short story contest and won.

He could travel to present his story in New York, but the money did not reach us.

At the end of 2021, the university offered Mateo a double degree.

We talked about it, because the semester was left at 3'500,000 pesos.

I didn't know where that money would come from since my salary was barely enough for expenses.

I told him: "Do it, we'll pay anyway."

He did a series of interviews and is now studying electronic engineering and telecommunications engineering.

David is graduating this year from college and we are thinking about how to make him study medicine.

We continue with a desktop computer, one of the oldies.

He does the repairs for it, and it's been a blessing to have him.

In May of last year I started working at the Samaritana hospital.

I earn less, but I have everything that is legal, and although I am temporary, I have done well.

I help my parents financially, I continue to get ahead with my children although every month I don't know how I will reach the salary.

In Colombia, five million women face the same challenges as Francy.

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