Volunteer's Letter
From Lareena, of Sydney:
I spent a month last year volunteering with Peru’s Challenge, an organisation established by a young Australian woman and her Peruvian partner to improve the living conditions and education of Indigenous children and families living in rural communities near Cuzco. As a volunteer, I worked on a range of tasks, from art and English classes with the kids and renovating the classrooms, to helping the social worker run skills workshops with mothers of the children. As well as carrying out important social work through house visits and group work, Peru’s Challenge works in partnership with recipient communities to help secure the continuation of education provision to young children. The organisation aims to promote independence and sustainability, so that a community is able to be self-sufficient after a period of time. The village where I worked was Pumamarca, where the Department of Education was threatening to close down the primary school. As it is too far for the kids to walk to Cuzco, this generation of children in this community would not have received an education if the school had closed. Through consultation with the community and the Department, an agreement was reached to keep the school open, with the Department funding one teacher, and Peru’s Challenge funding another as well as providing volunteers to carry out additional classes, and manpower and materials for the restoration of the buildings. Today the school is flourishing, with around 100 pupils attending daily. Volunteers are constructing a new building where the mothers will participate in skills workshops, and considerable work has been done with the children and their families around health and hygiene. Through a lunch program run by the children’s mothers with support from the volunteers, we can be sure that the children are getting at least one nutritious meal each day.
I wish I could have stayed longer ( I couldn’t get anymore time off work) and I’ll never forget it. Hopefully I did my bit in some small way to contribute to the community, but I can’t help but think I got more out of it than the local people did. I have never been anywhere where I’ve been so warmly welcomed by the local people. The Q’echua people had so little to give, yet always so much to share. The language barrier was never a problem and I enjoyed every minute I spent with them. They are always smiling and in the whole month I was there, I think I saw just one kid cry, despite the fact that they must be constantly hungry and cold.
I could go on and on and on….. but hopefully that gives you a flavour of it, and the best place for people to get more information on Peru’s Challenge is their website
www.peruschallenge.com
