A computational experiment:

The organization “Our little sisters and brothers” has counted that since 1954 “over 20,000” children have grown up in the children’s villages of the big family. This calculates an average length of stay of about 6 years (this seems little, so would have to be verified). We have distributed this over the decades and added the descendants. For now, without any scientific claim (that will come later).

In 1954, Father Wasson started with 8 children, in 1963 there were 400, and in 1975 about 1000. From 1985, more countries were added. In 2010 and after, about 3500 children lived with “Our little sisters and brothers”, today it is a little less. Currently, there are as many external ones, but we have not yet added them.

Our model calculation would yield, in addition to the 20,000 adults, nearly 25,000 children, 10,000 grandchildren, and just under 3,000 great-grandchildren. So there could be a group of well over 50,000 people, just under half of whom would be children up to 14 years old.

Then we assumed that the adult “Big Sisters and Brothers” leave the orphanage at age 19 on average and have 1.5 children at age 23 on average, as do their children’s children.

Most of the “children” of Father Wasson, also have other relatives. Although Father Wasson tried to focus on the children who did not have a mother. In doing so, he took all the siblings together and it was often a challenge just to determine who the “siblings” were. He solved this by meaning all “children of one mother.” In any case, there are half-siblings, much older siblings, uncles and tanks, cousins and grandparents who more or less know about the philosophy of the community, many even know the facilities of “Our Little Sisters and Brothers” from their own visits. One of the goals of our foundation is to learn more about the living situation of this group as well and to invite them together with the people who themselves grew up with Father Wasson to a community with suitable offers. This could strengthen the biological family structures and be beneficial to the development of all associated children. We estimate that this is more than 100,000 more people.

Our calculation may be far from reality, however, it becomes clear that possibly the “descendants” of Father Wasson’s family could be the larger group. From our personal experience, we know that at least the direct descendants of the older sisters and brothers were often taught by their parents the values that Father Wasson had established.

Why are we interested in the descendants? It is today’s generation and it may grow significantly. Unfortunately, we know many examples where their parents did not manage to overcome poverty. Yet that was a stated goal of Father Wasson. In order for the following generations today to get to know and use the network of this special family, we would like to network and strengthen them among each other. One obvious project would be a scholarship program to enable the children’s children to receive an education. Financed by their parents’ generation, because many have a good living today and are very grateful to Father Wasson and “Our Little Sisters and Brothers” for this.

The arithmetic experiment has also revealed a completely different development: Since Father Wasson began taking in his first children about 70 years ago, they are now at an advanced age and are reaching the statistical end of their lives. The number of deaths in this group will increase over the next decades at a similar rate as the number of new children admitted at that time. Although “Our Little Sisters and Brothers” has always been confronted with deaths from a wide variety of causes, this is an additional challenge. Among other things, against the background that the organization certainly sup-ports in individual cases, for example, to pay for the funeral. We think this is true proof of a real family for life.