Fran Talavera

Since getting back to Peru in February time has really flown and I have been so busy working both with Azul Wasi as well as LAFF’s new project partners here, Casa Mantay and Sacred Valley Project, which the LAFF board approved earlier this year.

We have been doing really different things with each project as LAFF responds to our partners’ needs (which are often quite different!), so here is a run-down of what I’ve been up to with each of them:

One of Casa Mantay's beautiful bags from the new product line

Casa Mantay – Casa Mantay already has a very active and productive workshop onsite at their home for adolescent mothers and their children on the outskirts of Cuzco. Speaking to them however, we have helped them identify areas for improvement such as broadening their market around Peru and internationally and are helping them to implement their idea of creating a new, luxury product line which they can target at the local market, enabling them not to have to rely solely on tourism which only really peaks for 3 months of the year here in Cuzco and has seriously diminished over the last couple of years due to natural disasters, the global recession and more recently through strikes and political instability. I’ve been working with them to put together a business plan to really assess how their new line will work and ensure that it will be a success, helping to put together a catalogue for their products to promote more widely and LAFF also helped Casa Mantay to attend the Peru Gift Fair 2011 to promote their products to an audience of professional buyers from all over the world. Increasing Casa Mantay’s sales and range of products will have a really positive effect on the home; enabling them to cover more of the homes running costs through income generated and will eventually open up more jobs for former beneficiaries of the home.

Sacred Valley Project – SVP is a relatively new project so has totally different needs from Casa Mantay which has been running for over 10 years. With SVP we have been helping them to equip their study centre for the project which now enables 13 girls from rural villages around Ollantaytambo to attend schools which they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to attend and may well instead be working the fields to support their families in their villages. We have also been investigating sustainability ideas with the project and SVP are keen to start up a small guinea pig farm which will enable the girls to have some responsibility and learn skills which are very valuable in their communities along with generating income to contribute towards the costs of running costs and tutors for the project through selling guinea pigs to local restaurants. Ollantaytambo is where most tourists catch the train to Machu Picchu so is a great place for this with lots of busy restaurants.

First harvest from Azul Wasi's greenhouse

Azul Wasi – at Azul Wasi we have continued to help them build capacity and confidence in using their greenhouse to produce their own vegetables. Earlier this year, we refurbished the greenhouse by replacing the plastic which was quite worn and by installing a new drip irrigation system. We were impressed by their success in their use of the greenhouse up with assistance from Wilfredo, LAFF’s greenhouse trainer and expert. We have continued with training and aim to leave the greenhouse project in Azul Wasi’s hands by the end of August. Along with this, we have continued to work with the home’s director, Alcides, in order to build capacity in financial management and long-term planning.

Aside from working with LAFF’s partner projects another highlight for me is that we have been busy compiling the Annual Report which will be out soon – it’s so exciting to be reminded of all we’ve achieved over the last year and how far we’ve come as an organisation. I have also been looking at new potential partners in Peru’s two largest cities, Lima and Arequipa, which we are reviewing at the moment.

Today is the first ever International Day for Street Children and LAFF is joining the Consortium for Street Children in celebrating the day to give a voice to the millions of children worldwide who are invisible, ignored and do not have a voice. This is an exciting year for this important cause as, additionally, last month the UN Human Rights Council met with other key players to discuss the rights of street children globally and how to tackle this burning issue. Rights for children in general are highlighted in the human rights agenda, but street children are swept under the carpet – an issue that no government seems to want to own up to, or deal with.

Having the day being celebrated internationally brought me to think about why this is the issue that I have chosen to work on and why LAFF has chosen to focus on this issue in their work.

Why me?

Fran with street workers at Colibri, police-run refuge centre, Cuzco

I am a bit of an idealist and, for me, it simply is not fair that the world is not a more equal place – how can there be such riches and such poverty and, more importantly, how can 10% of the world’s population own 85% of the world’s riches, and how can 50% of the world’s population only have access to 1%?! For me this is absurd. Poverty is a huge contributing factor to the issue of street children – parents can’t afford to feed their children or send them to school; children run away to give their brothers and sisters a better chance in life; children are the main breadwinners in their families who can’t afford not to make them work; children are abused at home as parents turn to alcohol to dull their disappointment in life… These are just some of the causes that lead to children living and working on the streets. I worked for a year as a volunteer with a police-run centre for niños trabajadores de la calle (child street workers) and during that time I could see these issues very clearly – this is what spurred me on to want to try and make a difference for these children who have to become adults all too soon and why I am so proud to work for Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) – a charity that holds the same values as me.

Why LAFF?

LAFF was set up by Sarah Oakes, who I met while volunteering in Peru six years ago. She worked on community development projects and also felt this sense of injustice so decided to do something about it. When she returned to the UK she set up LAFF to tackle needs expressed through talking to many children and children’s homes. As a small charity, LAFF can’t do everything so decided to focus on two key areas:
- Helping children’s homes to become self-sustaining through generating income, lowering costs and capacity building, so as not to need to depend on external support which can be fickle and unreliable
- To help provide vocational support for children in care to enable them to access dignified employment once they leave the homes, trying to break the stigma associated with former street children

In 2006 UNICEF published a report on ‘The State of the World’s Children’ which stated that there were over 100 million street children worldwide – 40% of those children live in Latin America which is a significant proportion of the world’s street children.

The International Day for Street Children provides an exciting opportunity for LAFF to promote our work as for the last two months we have been working on Schools Resources in order to try and get this issue into the classroom in a fun and inspiring way for children in the UK – if you are a teacher and would be interested in using this material to raise awareness about this important cause please get in touch by emailing LAFF! Equally, although this year International Day for Street Children falls in the Easter holidays, why not hold a day to celebrate once schools starts again so as not to forget the plight of such children?

LAFF hopes to celebrate the day more prominently next year when we are more established, but in the meantime, in order to celebrate the day here in Peru I’m off to visit a couple of potential partner projects in Peru’s second biggest city, Arequipa.
Find out more by reading informative articles from The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

On 11th January I went back to the UK for five weeks which was quite a change. It was great to see friends, family and my husband who I had not seen since I left for Peru in September. I had thrown myself into my work in Latin America so much that even just having one week off when I got back to the UK felt like such a luxury and was really relaxing, even though I was actually studying for an exam!

Otherwise, while I was back, I was still working for LAFF and it was a pretty busy month! We held a Burns Night Ceilidh in honour of our much-cherished fellow trustee, Hannah Barrett, who tragically passed away at just 26 years of age following a battle against cancer – this was an event that she had started to organise before she lost this fight. The night was a great success, though of course tinged with sadness, but was a great tribute and we managed to raise £2,839 for LAFF to use to help children and vulnerable people in Latin America. I had lots of meetings with other supporters of Azul Wasi which LAFF helps to co-ordinate to enable Alcides, who is very pushed for time on top of his job as a full-time policeman, to run the home efficiently and look to its sustainable future. I gave a lot of presentations to over 700 potential supporters including schools, churches and Rotary groups which was exciting and it was really interesting and inspiring to get back to why we do what we do and look at it from different angles, such as careers talks to Sixth Form students and sessions on malnutrition to children in year 9. One brilliant resource that I used was a video which was put together for the Ceilidh, and serves as a great, short, sharp introduction to LAFF’s work, view it here:

My time in the UK was also a good test to leave the systems that I had started to help Azul Wasi work on in place for them to use without my on-hand support and this was very encouraging. Particularly in regard to accounting we have made so much progress since September. Meeting the LAFF trustees to decide on which new projects to work with was also very exciting and we now have two new project partners: Casa Mantay and Sacred Valley Project which I have mentioned in previous posts.
Another highlight of my trip back was when I was invited to attend an international parliamentary visit from a group of Costa Rican MPs –it was really interesting to speak to them and compare some experiences I had working in Peru to how things work in Costa Rica, which is renowned as one of the most successful and stable countries in Latin America. It is especially interesting now to reflect on my discussions with them as the Peruvian presidential elections take place here in Peru.

Firstly, huge apologies for not having written for such a long time – I can’t believe two months have passed so quickly! So, back to where I left off… Three months into my role as International Projects Manager for LAFF and I seem to have reached that time when work becomes so manic that there seems to be no time for anything that isn’t either urgent or vital (flashbacks of my old boss explaining the theories of importance vs. urgency and how to prioritise…). I’m now in the UK for a month and as I sit on a train writing this, I reflect that a contributing factor to this ‘lack of time’ is that working in Peru is much less efficient than working in the UK. This is not only due to Peruvian time-keeping (as I may have already mentioned…) but also because it is less safe than the UK, so when I go out I try to take as little with me as possible to avoid being mugged or getting seen as a ‘rich gringo’ so I can’t work on the move as I can here. Another reason for this inefficiency is that my internet is painfully slow (although ironically I do wish that I had my dongle with me on this train journey now!) which means that it takes me longer to do things than it would in the UK. Of course, I accept these differences and work within my means, but an issue I find with this is that as I’m working for a British NGO, I feel that I should be keeping up with the pace of work that I would be in the UK so I end up working extra to try and make up for that!

View over La Paz, Bolivia

In mid-December I went to Bolivia for a week on a sort of recon mission to look at potential projects for LAFF to support there. It was a great trip – very inspiring and also a well-needed bit of time out of Cusco, which can get a bit claustrophobic after a while!

As I didn’t know many people in La Paz, I decided to stay in a hostel so that I could meet people there – this worked really well and I met a lot of interesting people there doing a variety of things. There was one funny moment when I was talking to a guy from Australia who, when I told him I was working while I was in La Paz (and not travelling), could not understand why I hadn’t put myself up in a luxury hotel… Well, my friend, I work for a charity and not only do I not want to waste their resources but also this hostel actually happens to be better positioned and way friendlier than any of the posh hotels in La Paz!

Visiting projects for LAFF to consider supporting in Bolivia was a brilliant experience. It is an area that LAFF is very keen to expand to and, in my opinion, it would be silly not to: Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. In fact, poverty there is very much more visible than in Peru – this is actually the biggest ‘culture shock’ that I have faced over the last few months. Instead of it being from coming all the way from the UK to Peru it was crossing the border from Peru to Bolivia. There are clearly projects and people that could benefit from LAFF’s support and input there, so I am planning to return to Bolivia later in the year for a month or two to enable LAFF to work there as well.

I saw a variety of projects in La Paz and also linked up with various volunteering organisations to ask their advice on projects in the area that could do with LAFF’s support. I had a very busy week seeing:

Me modelling shawls at Fundacion Machaqa Amaw'ta

• Microloan schemes for vendedoras ambulantes – women street vendors who don’t even have enough money to have a stall, they sell things by walking around the streets and this leads to serious health problems for them, not to mention that it is also dangerous and they earn very little. Fundación Machaqa Amaw’ta helps them to access better paid and more dignified employment by loaning co-operatives of these women money, training and education to make products such as shawls, chocolates and woven products – for this they get a fair price for the goods they make, gain basic literacy skills (many of them didn’t even finish primary school), and nutritional and healthcare advice. This, in turn, enables them to give their own children better opportunities and combats things such as malnutrition and them dropping out of education.

• I saw projects working with street children as well, though it appears that the trend in Bolivia is to work with them through training their parents to enable them to provide their children with better opportunities and a better quality of life. Fundación La Paz showed me a training centre for parents of children in high risk situations where they could learn how to sew clothes and then were able to take these skills to set up their own microenterprises.

The Arco Iris Bakery

• Arco Iris was a very impressive set-up which provides support to street children through various initiatives which appeared to me to be well thought-through and excellent projects. I saw their homes for girls and boys previously on the streets and their vocational training centres there where I could smell delicious panetón and stöllen being baked for Christmas. They also train these children in making clothes and woodwork – they can either carry on working there as their job or pursue other avenues with support from Arco Iris. Another thing that impressed me about Arco Iris’ work was the after-care element of it. While I was there I was invited along to their annual Christmas Dinner for ex-beneficiaries of their homes – it was so interesting to chat to them and they clearly valued the opportunity to take time out of their busy lives to meet up with their ‘brothers and sisters’ again. Arco Iris not only supports them through further education, but also provides them with a sort of ‘starter pack’ when they move out, providing things like furniture and equipment for their first flat.

• I also saw Arco Iris Hospital while I was in La Paz – another arm of Arco Iris’ work. The hospital is massive and has gained a reputation as the best hospital in La Paz. Impressively it is totally self-sustainable yet manages to provide free healthcare to over 40,000 poor people a year. There is no NHS in either Peru or Bolivia so free healthcare is a luxury – most people who can’t afford it simply have to go without or make huge sacrifices to pay for healthcare. The hospital is able to provide this and still be sustainable due to its reputation and different pricing bands for healthcare – there are free levels: free, cost-price and private enabling people to pay the level they can afford. They are also the only service to go out to the community to provide healthcare in mobile clinics – one barrier to healthcare, aside from the cost, is that in some areas people live very far from their nearest health clinic so Arco Iris bridges that gap by going to them.

I met with a couple of other organisations as well, but wasn’t able to visit the projects themselves so that is something for my next trip to Bolivia. Ironically, despite the similarities between Peru and Bolivia, very simple things are different – for example, I wasn’t able to see these projects as the children had already broken up from school for Christmas, while in Peru they break up very late on 23rd December so it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask about this! Its funny how there can be more culture shocks crossing just one border rather than flying over the whole of the Atlantic!

A couple of parasites, an exciting visit, lots of hard work later and I can’t believe that I wrote my last blog a month ago – time seems to have flown by! I have been lucky enough to have some company in the form of Matthew Oldfield, a photographer sent by the Vodafone Foundation to shadow me for a week – sounds very glamorous! To be honest it was great having someone to show round the work I’ve been doing and the potential projects I’ve been getting to know over the past couple of months. So I gave Matt a whistle-stop tour of my work here! We were absolutely shattered by the end of each day; I think you’ll see why:

Monday – went to visit Casa Mantay and participated in a workshop about self-confidence and teambuilding for the girls there which involved everyone (including me and Matt) being passed over all of the girls which was quite scary but also quite fun! Then they had a discussion about what the girls liked most about themselves and about the group at Casa Mantay. This was led by a group of Spanish volunteers which I have a lot of admiration for – they are so welcoming and full of energy. I’ve got a lot out of their sessions and I’m sure the girls have too. We then went and met all the cute toddlers in the nursery there and finally to meet the girls that work in the workshop making products which contribute to Casa Mantay’s sustainability. In the afternoon we went to see the place that I volunteered in for a year from 2005-6, a police-run refuge for children working on the streets of Cusco. There weren’t many kids that I recognised there but it was great to see Carmen and Patty who I had worked with a lot and had a lovely chat with them and their mum who still sells her woven and knitted goods in Calle Resbalosa. It was especially heartwarming to chat to Patty who has now left school and is applying to study tourism at university!

Casa Mantay girls dancing on stilts!

Tuesday – We dropped by Casa Mantay in the morning to do them a favour and take some photos of their goods so that they might be able to sell them online, or at least promote them more. On our way up the hill though we saw some dancing going on in a park – it turned out to be the girls from Casa Mantay dancing on stilts! Pretty cool and unexpected! Turns out they’re practising to take part in a parade organised by an NGO that promotes self-worth and confidence in December. Then we picked up some fruit at San Jerónimo market (5 mangos for 20p!) and headed down to Azul Wasi. I wanted Matt to see a typical day, so we arrived to have lunch with the boys – which involved Iván patiently teaching me some Quechua (and me instantly forgetting it…) and one of the cats snatching Neptalí’s meat out of his hand, so I gave him mine. Then the boys got down to homework which was fun to help them with and spend some time with them.

Wednesday – we met Neptalí and Oscár at 7am to go over to Urubamba to visit the Azul Wasi guinea pigs at the farm they’ve been moved to. A bit of a mix-up about where to meet, but the boys turned up in the end – only after the thought had crossed my mind that maybe I had facilitated their escape by giving them money for their bus fares… scary! So, we got to Urubamba by minibus, then hopped onto a couple of mototaxis to an old bus which eventually crawled up the hill to Washi’s house. We hadn’t been able to make contact with Washi before going so we really did have our fingers crossed and luckily he was there when we arrived – phew! So, Washi (a former Azul Wasi boy who has been relocated with his family) showed us round the rabbits and guinea pigs (confusingly both called ‘cuyes’ in Peru) and the rest of the animals at his house and even gave the other boys a bit of a lesson on guinea pig care. Oscár seemed interested; Neptalí was too busy posing… After taking the boys for lunch and dropping them off to get the bus back to Cusco, we pressed on to Ollantaytambo where we had some lunch at Hearts Café (which supports Living Heart‘s work) before going to meet Bianca and the girls at Sacred Valley Project. When we got there we found it was capulí season and the girls were itching to go and pick some of the berries. So we all went on a nature walk through the corn fields of Ollantaytambo – strikingly beautiful as it is surrounded by huge mountains and Inca ruins. The girls were up the tree to pick the berries incredibly fast and only came down once their bags/stomachs were full! Then as we walked through they showed me which herbs were which and what ailments they healed – really enlightening! The girls at SVP all come from remote villages around Ollantaytambo and most have to travel at least 4 hours to go home to see their families each weekend. We then all reluctantly went back to the home to help the girls out with their homework and then played a fun game of Maths Bingo – lots of fun but very testing for my rusty mental arithmetic… Needless to say I didn’t win any chocolate!

Thursday – unfortunately our plans fell through this day, one of the challenges of working in Peru – if you organise something too far in advance then you tend to get stood up! A fine balancing act… Anyway it enabled us to both have a well-earned rest, a chance to catch up with emails and to prepare for the next few days.

Wilfredo and Hernan putting the drip irrigation system together

Friday – we went to meet Wilfredo, the greenhouse trainer and advisor I found for Azul Wasi, at 8am to buy the materials to replenish the soil and set up a new drip irrigation system at Azul Wasi, though of course the shop owner was late so we spent about 20 minutes waiting outside! Then there was more waiting around while they mixed the soil and compost together so we went to a local market for a juice – Matt and I couldn’t quite stomach the ‘main course’ Peruvian breakfast that Wilfredo and Jorge (his assistant) ate! Then we were off to Azul Wasi, stopping by another shop for the irrigation equipment en route. I got out at Oropesa as I had to meet Josefina, the breadmaking tutor, to plan and discuss the class the following day and once I got to Azul Wasi, Wilfredo, Jorge and some of the boys had already got well on the way to sorting out the greenhouse! We then did a lot of digging to replenish the soil with fertilizer and set to on the irrigation system which was fun and got all the boys joining in cutting piping and putting the system together. After lunch we then started to plant seeds which the younger boys especially enjoyed. It has been great to go back 2 weeks on and see results already!

Oscar showing us his bread rolls!

Saturday – we met Dante, Wilmer and Edwin early to go to the market to finish off buying things to decorate the new study/relaxing space that we’ve been working on with some funds generously donated by a member of the congregation of St Andrew’s Church in Cambridge, a longstanding supporter of Azul Wasi. It was an interesting experience going shopping with the boys as it was quite hard to get them to spend any money – perhaps as they are not accustomed to it… After a lot of wandering around they decided to buy some food for their budgies, some 3D posters, a couple of balls and some board games. We then went on an epic search for posters of footballers (one of their biggest requests) which are surprisingly hard to find in Cusco! But finally we did and then we all headed back to Azul Wasi for the breadmaking class. The class went really well, once all the boys joined in (a bit of a challenge) and they all enjoyed kneading then bread and making the rolls. It was delicious when it came out of the oven and provided them with bread for almost the whole week.

Sunday – we went to San Jerónimo market to meet Anastasia (the Azul Wasi cook) and a couple of the boys to help with their weekly shop. Something I have been working hard on with Azul Wasi is better financial control and accountability so it was good to see them using the system that I had helped them implement – even if Bautista was very shy and reluctant to get signatures for the products. It was a proud moment later on in the trip when he was getting them without me needing to constantly prod him!

I hope that gives you a taste of a typical week for me here. I’m really looking forward to seeing Matt’s photos and I’ll let you know where to view them when I can!

Playing a controversial game of Uno at Azul Wasi!

So, I have been in Peru over a month now and moved out of my ‘family home’ at Azul Wasi and into Cusco about 4 weeks ago. Things are going well – it feels like I’ve barely stopped since I’ve got here and it seems to have paid off as now I’m starting to see results and progress on many things: vocational training, capacity building, income generation and last but not least better accountability at Azul Wasi.

Washi, who is now looking after the Azul Wasi guinea pigs

The problem with making progress is that it throws up lots of questions as well! As is the world of international development I guess – incredibly complex and the fact that you care so much about it makes such decisions all the more harder. For example: vocational training – do children have time for it on top of their school work and allowing them time to enjoy their childhood? What’s the best way to go about it? How do you make it fun yet valuable? And most importantly, is there a real will from project partners to make it succeed? And with income generation: despite liking the idea and committing to income-generation

Me with one of the Azul Wasi guinea pigs!

initiatives, when it comes down to it do projects really want to become self-sustaining when it is much more work and effort than waiting for donations to come in, as fickle as these donations might be…? In these cases, how to best explain the benefits of self-sustainability without feeling like I’m forcing them to do something? These are all tough questions and they have made me re-evaluate the preconceptions that I came here with. I guess that I’ll learn more and more as I go and hopefully will find the answers so that the projects that LAFF works with can provide appropriate solutions and opportunities for the people they work with, with LAFF’s support.

Aside from my work with Azul Wasi I´ve started to visit other projects that LAFF might potentially be able to support – I´ve been impressed with all the projects I´ve seen so far which makes selecting which ones we can help all the more harder. So far I´ve seen:

Casa de las Estrellas (Chaska Wasi) – a home for disabled children that have been abandoned on the streets. Heartbreaking to see and hear how being disabled is such taboo here in Peru and that the children have to go to a special school, not so much because they need specialist help (although they do and there is a startling lack of classroom support here for teachers) but because the parents of the other children think they will ´infect them´.

Poster from campaign 'Cuidate y Cuidame' against domestic violence led by Casa Mantay

Casa Acogida Mantay – a home for pregnant and teenage mothers who are there predominantly through sexual abuse, mainly suffered within their own family. In such a machistic society it is incredibly hard for girls to speak out against this type of violence until it is too late. However, even then the laws surrounding rape and abuse are shocking. For example, up until 1991 rape was only considered a crime if the girl was under 7 years of age, otherwise it would normally be considered seduction on the part of the girl. Fortunately the laws have since been updated (not to anywhere near the level that we are lucky enough to have in the UK), but it is still incredibly hard to convict paedophiles and rapists here. The director of the home told me that they had had no success on these matters. However, in the case of girls being with their boyfriends who were one or two years older than them, the fathers quite regularly managed to convict the boyfriend of ´rape´ leaving him in prison and the girl voiceless to speak out. I was incredibly impressed with Casa Mantay; it was a beautiful and uplifting place and provides a nursery for the children to be cared for so that the mums can work and training for the mums in things like artisanal goods (purses, bags etc) of a very high quality.

Sacred Valley Project's new site which will enable them to begin income-generating activities and house more girls

Aldea Elim – a home for street children which provides home and vocational training for children living on the streets of Peru. When LAFF supported them in providing equipment for a soup kitchen and educational supplies a few years ago the home was split into two sites: one for boys and one for girls. This is still them aim and they are in the process of building a new building to house the boys and provide space for better vocational training, however, when I went they were all crammed into the girls house. The boys were living in one room impressively stacked with bunk beds – 18 beds in total. Hopefully this won´t be the situation for long though and it was very heart-warming to see them all mucking in together and patiently waiting for the new building to be finished (predicted in a month or two) where they know they will have a better and more stable home.

Sacred Valley Project – a home for rural girls who would otherwise be working in the Andean Highlands in the Sacred Valley. Another impressive project – small at the moment (it supports 6 girls currently) but with a sustainable plan for growth: they plan to take in 6 more girls each year until they reach their maximum capacity of 30 girls. They work very closely with the families of the girls and the community leaders to select who should take part in their programme, a process they are refining for the coming academic year. Bianca showed me the new building that they had managed to secure for next year which will give them much more space to grow as well as providing space for the girls to be outside and do exercise, set up a community library and for them to begin income generating activities as well.

Microbanking at Casa de la Esperanza

Casa Hogar de la Esperanza – another home for teenage mothers, again through domestic violence or through them running away to the streets and getting involved in prostitution to stay alive. These girls also learn skills such as sewing, knitting, weaving and jewellery-making. They go out to sell their products accompanied by their guardian and use a microbanking system which enables them to save money to have some capital behind them once they leave the home.

Living Heart – an organization that helps improve nutrition, health and education levels in the Andean Highlands and provides support to over 400 children and their families. They fund their work through running a (very good!) cafe in Ollantaytambo and sell some of the goods of the families they support there as well. They very much aim to empower the communities and individuals they work with and have gained such fame for their brilliant work that there is actually a waiting list for communities wanting their assistance and support.

So, I´ve visited a few projects so far and have been impressed by them all, so then comes the question – who do we help?! This is obviously a tough question, and one that NGOs face daily, but it has provided an opportunity for LAFF to formalize its selection process so I am in the process of designing a questionnaire that I can give to the projects and help them to fill in once I’ve made an initial visit to see in what way LAFF could best support them and if it falls in line with LAFF’s objectives and vision.

Visiting these projects and working with Azul Wasi has also made me realise that LAFF can actually provide much more support than simply money – working with project directors to get transparent accounting systems into place will enable them to access other funding routes; bringing fresh ideas on where to sell products will enable girls to get a better price for their work, or could contribute to sustainability of the home; linking projects with dedicated, long-term volunteers will bring stability both to children in homes and more value to the projects they work on; participating in brainstorming sessions to bring a fresh perspective in will help generate new ideas and initiatives; and bringing projects together to learn from how each other are working will form a best practice and support network.

So, as I said, progress brings questions and dilemmas, but also opportunities to think outside of the box and try new ideas!

I’ve been here just over 3 weeks now and I am constantly being reminded both why I love Peru so much and also why I’ve been itching to get back here to work on development projects ever since I last left, over 3 years ago.

What I love most about being here are the little things that are culturally different from the UK, these being: the generosity of people (especially those that have very little), their spontaneity and openness.  Here are just some examples from my last couple of weeks:

Me walking along the road to Azul Wasi

-    Walking down the dusty path to Azul Wasi and literally everyone saying hi to me, be it in Spanish or Quechua!

-    Going to a bakery to buy wood for the Azul Wasi oven and having the baker laugh and say, ‘well if it’s only for one cake you may as well bring it here and I’ll cook it for you for 1 sol’ (1 sol is about 20p).  Refreshing how he was turning down the profit from the firewood simply to save me money and effort.

-    Taking some of the boys out with me with the promise of getting a mototaxi back (like a tuc tuc) and as so many of them came along, not being able to despite me trying to get them to ask if we could fit all 6 of us plus firewood in and one of the youngest boys saying ‘no, let’s not make the amiga spend her money’ – so cute!

-    The other day we went out to ‘buscar un tractor’ (to find/look for a tractor) – I thought they meant to go and find

Dancing in the Plaza de Armas in Oropesa

one to get a quote for some work, but after driving around for a bit I realised that it actually was a ‘hunt’ for a tractor (we didn’t find it in the end).

-    Going into Oropesa to get an Inca Kola and finding a full-blown fiesta going on in the plaza – we sat down to watch and, being the only gringas there, we were pulled up to dance in front of the whole town!  We then got rewarded for our efforts with a beer and some chicha (a traditional Peruvian beer).

-    Going to a tiny family-owned store and when buying packs of biscuits as a treat for the boys the shop owner slipped one in ‘for me’ as a freebie!

But then, there is the other flipside to this outward joy and friendliness when you get a stark reality check to find that people around you are having to make awful choices: between buying food or going to the doctors; between working on the streets or dying of hunger; of running away to live on the streets or being beaten regularly or being forced to work… and the list goes on.  These things are so sad to hear, but it makes me realise just how crucial LAFF’s and other charities’ work is to help alleviate these problems forever, bit by bit.

At a macro level Peru appears to be doing really well – 8.3% GDP growth predicted for this year and it is now listed among the best places to invest in Latin America, but it seems like this wealth is taking a very long time to trickle down, in fact little seems to have changed for street children since I was living and working here 5 years ago.  For more info about the economy of Latin America generally, see this Special Report from The Economist.

However, the state healthcare system in Peru only applies to those fortunate enough to have a proper contract and employer’s contributions to the system, which alas, does not cover that many people here and particularly not the ones I work with.  Many employers in Peru will fire people just before they’ve been in the job for 6 months as that is when they have to provide these sorts of benefits. However, they are often more than happy to re-employ the person a few weeks later, though without these vital benefits.

The ‘free’ state education system is also not quite as good as it sounds.  Although the service itself may be free, in order to go to school children need uniforms each year and also have to pay for handouts in class, exercise books and trips.  Fine for the middle classes, but this sort of financial burden prices poorer families out of the running, resulting in it becoming a huge burden to keep their children in school, or in the worst case, having to pull them out all together because they simply do not have the funds to sustain this.  The children at Azul Wasi are constantly asking for 1 or 2 soles for this and that, and at the moment LAFF funds them, but it is a huge burden even for a home of 12 children of different ages.

There are no formal benefits for poor families which often have many children, no matter how hard they work or how hard they are trying to access employment.  The best they might get is a tin of evaporated milk or a bag of rice every now and then, or being invited to a ‘chocolatada’ (party with hot chocolate and panetón – Peruvian Christmas cake) at Christmas-time.

I wrote this post before catching up with the British press – it now seems ironic that I have written this as the cuts to British public services and benefits begin…

I can’t believe I’ve only been here a week… it feels like AGES already!  I arrived at my home for the next 2 weeks, Azul Wasi (The Blue House), last Thursday and it is truly an inspirational place.  I am surrounded by incredible scenery and my new family of 12 boys, aged from 8 to 21, who are all former street children; Alcides (the director, who I worked with for a year 5 years ago to set the home up from scratch); Henry (the guardian); Anastasia (the cook) and her daughter, Carmen Rosa; 2 bulls; 3 dogs; a hen and a very loud cockerel which crows all through the night…  The mixture of which has had me up before my alarm (unheard of!) every day since I arrived.  It is a wonderful place and it is so brilliant to see the boys happy, healthy and doing well at school after so many years of hard work and supporting the project from the UK.

Azul Wasi (The Blue House)

Though as amazing as it is finally getting to know these boys that we have been supporting for so many years, it is equally heartbreaking to learn their stories and find out how they ended up at Azul Wasi.  I guess it makes it even more heart-warming that they are clearly so happy and relaxed here, finally getting the childhood that they deserve, and also that they are consistently achieving As and Bs at school, particularly given that some of them were so behind when they first arrived.  Azul Wasi differs from every other children’s home I have seen, both in Peru and anywhere else in the world, as it has no high walls, security guards or strict regimes but instead is surrounded by open farmland and ample space for them to play and appreciate the scenery.  Alcides is adamant that he does not want the children to feel imprisoned, particularly as many of them have run away from other homes in the past either through suffering abuse or because they were so unhappy, and it as a result the boys enjoy more independence thus creating an atmosphere of mutual respect.

Panoramic view of Azul Wasi

Azul Wasi, the project that LAFF has supported for the longest, is doing brilliantly and the kids are clearly thriving here, though there is a still lot of work for me to do.  Two of my (many!) aims before Christmas were to: a) help Azul Wasi to start generating income to ensure that they can become self-sufficient and not have to rely on external funding for running costs and the guardian’s salary; and b) to help Alcides implement more robust accounting procedures to enable the home to access more funding and be more transparent to its international donors.  This also involves collaborating closely with other supporters of Azul Wasi to create a common vision and plans to move forward in the future – very exciting and also so incredibly useful for LAFF as the outcomes will help us to create a system of best practice which we can use when working with future project partners.  We are trying to find simple ways of improving this, without creating extra work for people managing these projects.

So, as I said, there is a lot to do and relatively little time, but something I need to get used to again is La Hora Peruana (Peruvian Time) – I had almost forgotten how long everything takes to do here!  Every meeting I’ve had so far has been at least 45 minutes late (not too bad), though some haven’t even happened the same day!  There have already been three strikes since I arrived and there are local elections this weekend – all of which contribute to delays.  Still, slow and steady wins the race, don’t they say?

So, here I am in a hostel in Lima before flying to Cuzco tomorrow morning (you can only fly to Cuzco in the morning as it gets too turbulent in the afternoon over the Andes).  I would have been going straight to one of LAFF’s project partners – Azul Wasi – but there are strikes on in Cuzco so unfortunately I’ll have to wait until Thursday for that.  Strikes here can include anything by the way, but there are usually roadblocks, lots of marching and chanting and usually a fair bit of violence for those who are breaking the strike… So getting a taxi from the airport to a friend’s house could be quite a challenge.  Getting to Azul Wasi would be even more of a challenge, however, as it happens to be on the way out of Cuzco, directly en route to the place where the epicentre of the strike is!  Not totally sure what the strike is about but it seems that they are opposing plans to divert water resources from the highlands in Cuzco to farmland in Arequipa.

Village next to Oropesa, where Azul Wasi is, in Feb 2010

Ironically there were very serious floods in Cuzco earlier this year (Jan/Feb) which affected much of the region, including Azul Wasi which had to be evacuated.  Fortunately thanks to LAFF co-ordinating an emergency response between international donors a flood defence wall was built just in time to save the buildings and the children were able to return shortly afterwards.  This, of course, pushed back the long-term initiatives that LAFF and other organisations around the world had invested in to help the home become more sustainable and self-sufficient, such as a greenhouse, bread oven, guinea pig farm (big business here!) and small-holding.  A big part of my job while I’m here is to help get those initiatives on their feet so that Azul Wasi can use them to bring in income and at the same time, the kids can learn useful vocational skills for later in life.

Jose, La Tasca Head Chef, cooking paella at the Salsa Night!

Before leaving for Peru I had a busy couple of weeks with the meetings, courses etc that I mentioned before – got some great ideas and tips from everyone I met which was brilliant, culminating in a Salsa Fundraiser Night which we managed to raise over £900!  An amazing result and could not have been done without support from the people that came, all the raffle prize donors, La Tasca (who cooked a huge paella!) and Cambiando, the band – thank you all!

Right, better get to bed now so I’m ready for my flight tomorrow, negotiations with the airline staff about where my baggage has got to (currently no one knows…) and battling through the strikes in Cusco…

I am writing this at the end of my second day working for Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF).  It was top on my ‘to do’ list on Monday morning, but I am rapidly realising that even working full-time there still aren’t enough hours in the day!  Though I do have to say that it does feel luxurious (and almost naughty, as if I were skiving from my ‘real job’) sitting down to start at 9am rather than at 9pm after a full day’s work!

I have butterflies of excitement in my stomach as I write this, because I still have to pinch myself to believe that I am actually doing my ideal job – full-time and getting paid for it!  It feels absolutely AMAZING!

So… first things first; let me tell you what I’ll be doing in my year working for LAFF:
-    Working directly with LAFF’s project partners in Peru to help them become stronger in areas such as accountability, transparency, dealing with international donors and, most importantly, to get well on their way to being self-sufficient.
-    Kick-starting income generation initiatives within those projects and enable the children living at homes to build vocational, practical skills through these initiatives.
-    Investigate the feasibility of a wider skills-based training programme to enable street children and their families to enter employment.  If feasible to then investigate how best to implement this scheme as a pilot in Cusco, Peru.
-    Find new projects for LAFF to support more people and projects in Latin America, predominantly in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Come along to the LAFF Salsa Night!

So far, my first two days (let alone my first two weeks) have already flown by and have been incredibly interesting already.  For example, I spent this afternoon chatting to Matt from The Commission for Youth Social Enterprise about social enterprise and vocational training programmes to see how I could use it in my work in Peru.  I got lots of great tip-offs about where to find information and he asked me lots of questions which triggered lots of things to consider when carrying out the feasibility study.  I had thought that this would to be a bit of a one-way knowledge exchange, but we carried on chatting and ended up discussing a new charity donation initiative that he’s working on and I managed to flag up some things from a charity perspective that he hadn’t thought of before, so we both left the meeting feeling very excited!

Over the next couple of weeks before I leave for Peru, I have lots of exciting things set up – meeting people from many other organisations to learn from them and discuss ideas, organising a fundraiser Salsa Night in Cambridge (come if you can!), finding out background information, attending some leadership training and meeting my course tutor from an NVQ that I’m working towards in Volunteer Management.  So, lots to do – I will let you know how I get on!