Volunteering with Peru’s Challenge

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I signed up to do volunteer work with Peru’s Challenge as I wanted to give something back to the continent that I have been so lucky to travel in.

Volunteering with Peru’s Challenge is a bit different from other volunteer organisation, as volunteers really get involved in the life of the children and the community. I guess you could explain it as a more holistic approach to volunteering and helping a community.

So, here is a little background to Peru’s Challenge:

Peru's Challenge was started by Jane Gavel (Australian) and Selvy Ugaz (Peruvian) when they were just 24 years old. Together they registered Peru's Challenge and met regularly with the Department of Education in Peru to support their work.

Since October 2003, when the volunteer program started, they have helped nearly 1000 families, and started to educate over 500 children in four different communities.
The charity is not affiliated with any other organisation and is purely managed by Jane and Selvy.

There are two aims of the organisation. They are:

1. To create basic opportunities for the children of Peru though:
• Education
• Health
• Happy and safe environment

Before starting any project, Jane and Selvy have lengthy discussions with all members of the community to ascertain what it is that they want and require for their children and how they can work closely together.

It is very important the community feels that they are working as a team. Constantly through the project development, they involve the community in all decisions and plans. This way, they learn to continue the great work that Peru’s Challenge have done together and become self sustaining with the support of the relationship built with the Department of Education for years to come.

2. To provide an exceptional travel and volunteer experience.

Peru's Challenge is also very committed to providing and exceptional volunteer travel experience to all of their participating volunteers.
Being part of the Peru's Challenge volunteer team is about realising how easy it is to give Peruvian children more opportunities, while travelling and enjoying the absolute beauty of Peru, and making friendships with other volunteers from around the world.

So there is a quick background of the organisation. But what did I actually do.....

The communities Peru's Challenge is currently working with are Pumamarca, meaning area of the Puma; Misqui Uno, meaning sweet one; and Killahuata, meaning year of the moon, are three small agricultural communities located in the mountain region above Cuzco.

The community members survive on their agricultural products - fresh flowers, maiz, potatoes and other vegetables, which they sell at local markets in Cuzco.
The producers have access to plots that are farmed continuously year-round for maximum produce and are also conitnuously cutting down trees. Both these practices are causing erosion and a decrease in the fertility value of the land.
Producers rely on weekly local rural markets that, because of the region isolation, appear as the main place for exchange and transactions.
Because the community does not have any funds, the Department of Education in Peru does not support the local primary school and it is left to fend for itself.
The benefit of non-agricultural activities is that they bring about a more stable and better time-distributed income stream. Women play an essential role in developing such activities, particularly small shops, cattle raising, flower markets and in the craft industry.

We worked five days a week - Monday to Friday. Generally, the day started at 9.30am when we drove up to Pumamarca School, about 20min up in the hills from Cusco. We worked with the kids at school until 1.30pm, teaching English, sport or art. I took lots of PE classes and one very interesting art class with the kindy kids, trying to teach them to make Christmas bon bons. If I wasn’t assigned to take any classes then I helped with construction work such as building, renovating, plumbing, painting, cleaning and gardening. While I was there we finished off the construction of the toilet block, and now the kids have the first flushing toilets in Pumamarca! All we need to do now is teach them how to use them....

After school finished we headed back to our house and had lunch. In the afternoons, we were rostered on to do a variety of things depending on what day it was. We would either conduct house visits through the House Challenge program with the Peru's Challenge social worker (this was certainly an eye opener as you got to see the real way that these people live), organising extra curricular activities, attending Spanish classes or having some free time to explore Cusco.

Three afternoons a week, from 3.00pm, Peru's Challenge runs a craft workshop for the mothers of the local communities. We usually went up once a week and assisted with weaving, sewing and jewellery making. To get the kids out of their parent’s hair, we also organised classes for the children in English, or just ran them around the play ground.

I was lucky enough to be volunteering with Peru's Challenge during Christmas time. Wow, did we have some cool parties with the kids. I was in charge of organising the Christmas celebrations, and we had three big parties / one for the kids at Pumamarca, one for the workshop mums and also one for a past Peru's Challenge community called Wanda, located out in the Sacred Valley. The parties consisted of eating lots of Pantone and chocolate milk and the highlight was alway when Papa Noel turned up hand out presents (John, one of the volunteers, made the ultimate Santa - and he managed to make the mothers blush a few times!!). The look on the kids faces when the opened up their presents was absolutely priceless. It was amazing how something so small (in our standards) could make a child so happy. It was such a great experience to be part of.

Probably the best part of my month volunteering was assisting one of children during our house visits. One of the volunteers, Cathy, decided to sponsor one of the kids, Sebastian. He is in grade 6, and is off to high school next year (thanks to the help of Cathy). In order to assess Sebastian’s needs, we had to do a house visit with the social worker so she could do a needs assessment on him and his family. We did two house visits. During the first visit, we spoke with the father about the family, their income (about $3 a week) and checked out their living conditions. The parents are both alcoholics and the mother doesn’t speak much Spanish (only Quechua). There is no running water to the house, no toilet and they are living in two small rooms - one for sleeping and one for living in. The bedroom consisted of two beds - a double that Sebastian and his parents shared and a single that the two older boys shared. Neither of the beds had mattresses or blankets. They piled their clothes on top of them to keep them warm. The kitchen/dining area was a small room with a basic mud stove, with no chimney. They had no table, and very limited utensils and pots and pans. There also wasn’t much food to be seen. This was certainly a very poor family.

We had to finish off our assessment during our second visit. When we arrived we found Sebastian alone in the house. His mother was drunk and had taken their Bull down to Cusco to sell in order to get money to spend on alcohol. Apparently she was going to sell it for about $150 soles, when in reality she should have been selling it for about ten times that. Luckily her oldest son had come in from a town three hours away and had found out what was happening and had gone down to stop her, or negotiate a better price. Once again when we looked around the house and there wasn’t much food to be seen, and Sebastian told us that neither he nor his brother (who had come home from school and gone straight out into the field to work) had had any thing to eat that day. It was really upsetting as Sebastian was so positive of his situation, yet he had absolutely nothing. He is certainly a kid wise beyond his years.

The decision was made to come back the following week and commence working on the house. Cathy went out on the weekend and bought three beds, mattresses and blankets for the boys and also a table and some plates and utensils for the kitchen. We headed up to the house on the 24th December and set up the beds in a separate room for the boys. We even had to install a lock on the door, which only the boys had, so the parents couldn’t sell the furniture. We also constructed a mud brink fence enclosure at the front of the house so they could keep their animals in there at night. All up, it was a pretty exhausting and emotional day. That was the last time that I saw Sebastian. There is still a lot of work to be done on the house, and with the family but I know that he will be ok with the help of Cathy and Peru’s Challenge.

I am so glad that I made the decision to volunteer my time in Peru. It is certainly an experience I will never forget. I have met some amazing people for all over the world and experienced the real life of Peru first hand.

Below is a quick outline of the Project in Pumamarca. It outlines the problems in the community and school, what has been done and what is yet to be done. Its an interesting read if you have time.

PUMAMARCA

Date Peru's Challenge started
September, 2005

Location
10km from the centre of Cuzco.

Description

Problems
In September 2005, Peru's Challenge spoke at length with the communities and outlined the following problems:
Education:
• The school urgently needs to be renovated
• Currently, there are only classes for kids up to grade four
• More teachers are needed to separate the grades
• The school has no learning or sports materials
Health & Wellbeing:
• The community often runs out of and has no access to safe drinking water
• The kids are not getting a healthy and nutritious diet, which Peruvian schools are meant to provide
• The community has no access to medical facilities
Social:
• Because the school facilities are so terrible, most of the children are moving into Cusco to go to school or find work.
• Families are breaking up and none of the younger generation is staying within the community to work the fields.
• Alcoholism and domestic violence is a problem within the community as a result of unemployment.

PROJECTS ALREADY COMPLETED
Since September 2005, school attendance has risen from 14 children to 130 children within kindergarten to Grade 6 classes.
Volunteers working side-by-side with the local community have completed the following projects:

AT THE SCHOOL
Construction work to make the school functional:
• Reconstructed the roof of the entire school.
• Renovated and painted the four existing classrooms.
• Built and equipped a kitchen.
• Built a play area.
• Constructed a perimeter fence.
• Started the construction of flushing toilets.
Education materials and learning resources:
• Organised for the Department of Education provide three teachers while Peru's Challenge pays for the remaining teachers salaries.
• Provided some physical education and learning materials and resources.
• Organised quarterly excursions for each grade.
• Organised lessons in arts & craft, English and physical education.
Health and hygiene programs:
• Started the teaching of general hygiene to the kids.
• Initiated daily teeth and face washing at the school.
• Provided fresh fruit every day for morning tea and additional food for lunches.
• Organised the mothers to cook a nutricious lunch for the school kids each day.
• Organised for doctors to visit the community every quarter to diagnose, provide free medicines and immunisations.
• Organised two specialists visits from dentists and gynecologists to the community.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
Community development
• Initiated the first project under our Small Loans for Community Development program - Pumamarca Talleres (Workshop) Group.
o For the whole of 2006, community members have been attending Talleres classes in the afternoons and have learnt the following skills:
 Weaving, knitting, painting, jewelry making, arts & craft, ceramics and woodwork.
o Peru's Challenge have organised weekly visits from a number of tourist groups whereby the Talleres Group host an exhibition and sell their products directly.
o Funds raised are put into a bank account and accessed by the Group at the end of each year.
o Peru's Challenge paid for all materials and equipment but during 2007 we are not going to pay for anything. The Group must use a percentage of sales made at each exhibition to reinvest into materials, therefore making the Group self-sustaining.

Social assistance and education
• Provided afternoon classes in English to teenagers and young adults.
• Provided information sessions on hygiene, nutrition, pregnancy and family planning.
• Organised counseling sessions for victims of alcoholism and domestic violence.
• Run the House Challenge program where we visit local families, talk about their current situations and provide assistance where possible in the form of:
o Money for food
o Clothes for family members
o Renovation work on houses
o House necessities: beds, sheets, blankets, chairs, tables, cooking utensils, etc.
o Funds for emergency and general medical treatments.

PROJECTS STILL TO BE COMPLETED

Over the next three years, Peru's Challenge aims to finish the following projects:

AT THE SCHOOL
Construction work to make the school functional:
• Build a covered eating area.
• Build and equip a library and computer centre.
• Build and equip an art and craft room.
• Build and equip a music room.
• Build an open stage area for theatre and presentations.
• Build and equip two additional classrooms.
• Provide safe drinking water to the school.
• Develop a vegetable garden to supply the lunchtime meals for the kids.
• Build a chicken coop to supply eggs for meals for the kids.
• Build beehives to supply honey to the kids.
• Construct two new classrooms.
• Build hot-water showers so the kids are cleaning themselves at least once a week.
Education materials and learning resources:
• Equip each of the five existing classrooms with materials and learning resources they are lacking.
• Organise for the Department of Education to provide all teachers salaries and curriculum materials.
Health and hygiene:
• Continue the teaching of general hygiene to the kids.
• Continue teeth and face washing to also include daily cream for their faces.
• Organise more regular specialist visits throughout the year ie. optometrists, dentists, nutritionists and pediatricians.
• Provide a motorised water pump with filtered piping to transport water from the mountain reservoir to the community.
• Construct water reservoirs to hold an ample water supply to last through the dry season.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
Community development
• Finish the construction and equip the community workshop.
• Build and equip a technical education room and provide classes and materials for the teaching of agricultural, mechanical and tecnical fields.
• Continue to develop the Talleres Group project and provide education in marketing and finance.
• Initiate more projects under the Small Loans for Community Development program:
o Fresh cut flowers.
o Fruits and cakes.
o Agricultural and dairy products.
o Cattle breeding program.
o Dairy products.
Social assistance and education
• Continue to provide afternoon classes in English to teenagers and young adults.
• Continue to provide information sessions on hygiene, nutrition, pregnancy and family planning.
• Continue to organise counseling sessions for victims of alcoholism and domestic violence.
• Continue to run the House Challenge program.

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Photos

Pumamarca
Looking over the community from the school

Grade 1 and 2 PE class
This was the challenge class. All the boys wanted to do is play soccer, and the girls skipping.

Poppa Noel
Poppa Noel handing out presents at the workshop party

Wanda Xmas party
Someone is enjoying her lolly pop!

Wanda Xmas party
Isn´t he a cutey!!

Comments

[Aaron]

Holy Hell!
Wow Anna. Thanks for that - I now know what I'm doing next year. Could they use a Civil Engineer I guess?