“Marijampolės vaiko tėviškės namai” (“Marijampolė Children’s Family Home”) founded in Avikilai village, Marijampolė municipality twenty years ago was only a wild idea of Monsignor Vytautas Kazlauskas.
Then many probably thought that the priest’s ideas about a home where abandoned children could grow together with their mothers, brothers and sisters were a little ridiculous and impracticable.
As once Monsignor Vytautas Kazlauskas told about himself: “Some people thought that it was only crazy talking of an old priest”. However, if now, after twenty years, all sceptics looked back, they would see that a great idea of a small man, having passed a long and complicated way, has become a lee and home for 105 children.
When Monsignor returned from Italy, where he worked as a host of Lithuanian radio shows at the Vatican radio for many years, he and his sister gave their parents land and the old family homestead in Avikilai for the future “Marijampolės vaiko tėviškės namai” (“Marijampolė Children’s Family Home”). The priest applied people residing abroad and in Lithuania for aid in order to establish home for children without parental care. At that time Canadian Lithuanian Catholic Women Association, Lithuanian daughters in the United States of America, Lithuanian Caritas in Austria, many other organisations and families responded to his application.
After two years, in 1992, Juozas Žemaitis, Vilkaviškis Diocesan, was already on his way for sanctification of foundations of the first three buildings.