CAN was founded through the vision of missionaries Alfredo Cerrato, founder and former President and CEO of Providence World Ministries, Honduras, and Father Sebastian Kolodziejczyk, Executive Director of Asociación Juan Pablo Magno, Peru, who shared the driving purpose of providing a family and a dignified childhood for the children in their care. With CAN still only an idea, Alfredo Cerrato left
Providence and was joined by Amber Schauske, former Program Director and Director of Organizational Development of Juan Pablo Magno to further plan, prepare, and develop the vision. Soon thereafter Leslie Gose, with a background in domestic and international adoptions, joined the team, and operations began on June 1st, 2009. Cornerstone Alliance Navigators (CAN) is a Christian nonprofit that advocates for the rights of the Fatherless by promoting best practices, information sharing, and investment in superior long-term outcomes in orphan care. CAN furthers this goal in several ways: we represent an association of childcare providers and advocates, providing our members with consultation, resources, and other services to ultimately benefit the orphans in their care. We maintain an Open Source Knowledge Base (OSKB) for non-profits to share best practices in family reunification, adoption, foster care, and international family-based residential care. CAN also offers medical equipment and supplies through its MedCAN program, directly improving the health of orphans, as well as indirectly raising revenue to channel into CAN’s other programs for their benefit. While much money has gone into orphan care worldwide, the orphan population continues to grow parallel with cycles of broken families, poverty and abuse. CAN does not settle for mediocrity; we believe these cycles can be broken by promoting best practices on all levels of care, beginning with educating benefactors, all the way to improving the daily lives of children.
