El Ropero - For many years The Salvation Army has been planning income-generating projects to help with its ongoing costs of providing service in Chile. This proved to be more complicated that one would think as the first step required a change to Chilean laws. The laws under which The Salvation Army was incorporated were ‘all or nothing’ when it came to tax exemptions for charitable work. Any income-generating ‘business’ would would have their operations taxed as businesses. The new law, which was lobbied for by the associations of Evangelical churches in the country, has to do with equal recognition of faiths. Up to this point, Chile’s church laws only pertained to the Catholic Church. The new law allows for equal access to all denominations.

At the same time, the new law allowed churches to create separate ‘foundations’ to provide other types of services or generate income without affecting the status of the church itself. Once the law was passed, The Salvation Army had to create new documents and literally become a new ‘entity’. Once the legal documents were in place, we could dream and plan for our future resource generating foundation.

We sought advice from the Enterprise Development Department at International Headquarters, and Lt-Cols Dan and Helen Starrett visited us on a couple of occasions to provide guidance. Our plan includes three phases to start with. First, we opened the business of selling used clothing, etc., that we will import from other parts of the Army world. The second phase is to collect donations within Chile to be sold, and finally, our vision includes other types of businesses which can contribute to our financial needs. These other businesses will include a funeral services business. (At the present time there is no evangelical funeral service in Chile.)

Our territory was blessed to receive assistance from different parts of the Army world. The first container received was a donation from the National Recycling office in Vancouver, Canada of clothing and shoes. We also received equipment for both the store and the warehouse, together with some clothing, from USA East, and a further container of clothes from USA Central. The USA East sent a team of officers to help train our staff and provided us with start-up financing, as did the Norway territory. Canada has promised us a fork lift and bailer for the warehouse.

Our first store opened on Sept. 29, with a band ensemble, a crowd of onlookers and a Salvation Army mascot: “Escudito”. We were blessed to have Lt-Cols Dan and Helen Starrett of IHQ, and Carolina Soto, a local TV Star. We are now working on opening the second store, which will be in the city of Valparaiso, following which a third will be opened before the end of the year here in Santiago.

Thank you Canada for all your help!

Susan McMillan
Lt-Colonel
Chief Secretary, South America West