MySmallhelp Cusco

El Milagro is a poor barrio between the laid back surf town of Huanchaco and Trujillo, Peru´s third largest city. El Milagro means miracle. This part of Peru is desert and not a lot grows here. There is little water. Houses are constructed out of adobe type material, old plastic bags and tarpaulins and the floors are just hardened sand, concrete and dirt. Water is delivered in by the municipalidad every 8 days and families top up this free water buy buying 12 buckets worth for 3 soles.

It is in this area that MySmallHelp has chosen to work. The Trujillo team of Deisy and Helen have spent the last 2months busily helping 5 mothers enroll 16 of their children (some of whom were working in the rubbish dump with them, collecting 1kg of plastic bottles to receive just 1.5 soles) in to school. This hasn´t been an easy task, as paperwork was missing, names had been mis-spelt and some of the mothers illiteracy slowed down the work. The children of these mothers are in 6 different schools close to where the mothers live. Some of the children have special needs or learning difficulties and the schools they are in reflect this. Deisy, Helen and Leander have been busy supporting these mothers and finding funds to enable these mothers to send their children to school safe in the knowledge that the fees will be paid for the first year.

Our recent meeting with the mothers was to understand what skills and abilities the mothers have to enable them to set up little businesses, that they can run from home, which will enable them to earn money so they don´t have to rely on foreign donations.

We spoke about numerous ideas. The favoured one seemed to be working with a Limenian tshirt designer who can help the women learn how to screenprint his designs on to tshirts to be sold in Trujillo and Huanchaco to tourists. We are busy now working out the costs of this, as water is required for this process and it is not in great supply here. MySmallHelp already has shops selling these tshirts in Cusco and in Lima. The next stage is to write a business plan and conduct some market research in the area.

I just wanted to write a blog entry about the mother of Jose Alfredo and the mother of Frank. These women are poor but patient, loving and calm. They both have large 18 year old boys who cannot feed themselves, bath themselves, speak or amuse themselves. As well as this, both are single mothers who have other children. Abandoned by their husbands, I would imagine, due to the stigma attached with having a disabled child. Often the mother is blamed for this.

The women were an inspiration. They were doing everything they had in their power and in their financial ability (which is not a lot) to get these children to Equip Kids International to get new wheelchairs to improve theirs and their children´s lives. I would think that having a child in England with a severe disability would be challenging enough, but here, the enormity of the task seemed greater. Houses are built of adobe, there is no hot water and evenings and days in the rainy season can be extremely cold. No-one has heating here in Cusco. There is no government financial support for families and certainly no careers allowance. The pavements are shoddy, rarely consistently passable for a wheelchair, disabled toilets hardly exist and disabled friendly taxis are never seen. Added to that people stare. Disabled children are kept in the home generally or in institutions. Children and adults on the streets of Cusco when we took Lurdes out and in the bus station stop and stare. A few ask questions ,but mainly they just stare.

These Mums are amazing and they and their children are exactly the reason why Leander and MySmallHelp have decided to continue to work in Peru.

Jose Alfredo´s mother is an inspiration. She is seen below leaning on Jose´s legs as he was unable to hold himself up in the slippy plastic chairs in the bus terminal.

What an effort. It was an eye-opener getting two severely disabled children- Lurdes and Jose Alfredo, plus their mothers, Jose Alfredo´s little brother, two volunteers and Leander and myself to dinner and then to the bus station ahead of the children´s 10 hour overnight bus journey to Arequipa to collected bespoke wheelchairs.

Even before the journey started we were on a mission. To be eligible to get these wheelchairs, the family of each child had to provide: the child´s birth certificate and DNI number (like our NI number), the parents DNI, case notes from the hospital on the child and proof of address in the form of a light or water bill. The team had 4 days to gather this information which was made more difficult due to the bureaucracy, red tape and out of date systems that exist in rural Peru. All of our team here had a task to do, which normally involved waiting….and waiting and paying a few extra soles to the correct people get the whole thing sped up.

Once we reached the bus station Lourdes, Jose Alfredo and his little brother Abel were so excited to be going on a journey. We bought them drinks and snacks and saw them safely on the bus with their escorts Sunny from Awamaki and Cristian, from MysmallHelp. We had also met another mother who was at the station with her severely disabled son Frank. She was desperately hoping that someone would give her the money to make the journey to Arequipa. We decided to help her and so she joined the group as they drove off to Arequipa to receive their wheelchairs from Equip Kids International.

Once again I was reminded of the colossal effort it had taken to get the guys on their way to receive such kindly donated wheelchairs. A reminder that even such a lovely gesture as giving a wheelchair to a disabled child who so desperately needs it, requires patience, relationships with families and knowledge of how to get around the Peruvian health and social services system.

Leander Hollings, president and founder of Mysmallhelp Peru was introduced to Lurdes in June 2010 and was asked if she could help her in any way. Leander quickly accepted her role as godmother and committed to finding a way for Lurdes to have access to an education, training and a wheel chair. This was the beginning of MySmallHelps involvement with children in Peru , following the previous years emergency relief work with the community of Paucarbamba.

Lurdes is eighteen years old and has a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, which causes bones to break, bend, and twist easily . ´

Lurdes lives in Rumira with an abusive and alcoholic mother and step father. Her alcoholic father left her mother when she was young. Lurdes suffers from neglect.. Lurdes can´t walk. Until 9 months ago, Lurdes was immobile and spent all her time at home, never attending school or venturing out into the community. During the second half of 2010, Lurdes received a wheelchair from a Spanish donor and began to receive private tuition lessons at home from a local teacher and was introduced to Cusceñan jewellery teacher- all through the work of MySmallHelp.

Lurdes jewellery business is growing steadily. She is now out and about in the community more but she still needs support to be able to get in and out of her wheel chair and to access certain areas.

Lurdes is very keen to learn to read and write but is progressing slowly because her school teacher is currently only visiting her for 6 hours a week.

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Lurdes for a while whilst in Ollantytambo and can say that for all that she has been through, she is an absolute delight to be around. She´s a teenager who loves styling her hair, painting her nails and she loves clothes! She has an infectious giggle and is great fun to be around. Her dream is to live independently and to look after her sister and brother and the team at MySmallHelp hope to work with Lurdes´strong spirit to help her achieve this through both donations and through supporting Lourdes to run her own jewellery business. I and my family hope to help Lurdes through the work of MySmallHelp.

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Following the work undertaken by Leander Hollings and numerous volunteers working with MySmallHelp , Leander had decided to continue working in Peru for the forseeable future. The first stage in this decision was getting MySmallHelp registered as a Peruvian Association (similar to NGO status) which took several months and was surrounded by the usual red tape!

As the guinea pig project is now nearly self sustaining and as Leander´s initial motivation 5 years ago was to set up projects to help marginalized children access education, this will be the charity´s primary focus.

There are two geographical locations where MySmallHelp will work in Peru, Ollantytambo in the Sacred Valley beyond Cusco and a barrio of Trujillo called El Milagro, which is around 10 hours north of Lima by bus, in the coastal dessert.

In Ollantytambo MySmallHelp in partnership with Awamaki, an American run NGO have identified around 40 children who are in need of assistance. These children are marginalized through poverty, social problems within the family or disability- and sometimes all three.

The work of MySmallHelp is centered around understanding the needs of each family, helping illiterate parents complete all relevant paperwork required for their children to attend school and be entitled to state benefits such as healthcare. Funding in the form of child sponsorship will be looked for to support the family in their initial requirements, whether it be paying the fees to enable to child to attend school or paying for specific equipment or tutoring as required by disabled children. Each family will be provided for on a needs identification basis.

Details of the childrens needs can be found at:

http://mysmallhelp.org/support_disable_person_in_peru.php

Donors will be encouraged to support the child through a monthly child sponsorship fee which will fund the identified requirement and provide additional services such as those of a child psychologist, nutritionalist and education specialists to visit the children and families where an identified need has been seen.

In Trujillo the system is much the same. Here there are 16 children from 5 famillies who through poverty and the absence of their fathers have not been able to attend school as they have been working on the rubbish dump with their mothers to fund the family. MySmallHelp hopes to help these children, again through the form of child sponsorship, to deliver the same support to get the children in to school as is being offered to families in Ollantytambo.

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Around this time last year, Peros kindly donated money to help the flood affected region of Paucarbamba (in the Sacred Valley of Peru) get back on their feet. After initial support of food, shelter and school equipment for the children we spoke with the community members and they wanted the donated money to help them develop small businesses, so they could generate income quickly to rebuild their houses.

As guinea pig meat is seen as a delicacy in Peru, as they are cheap and relatively easy to rear and because they are ready to sell after 6 months of so after the initial set up, we supported the 19 families who wished to participate in the project with tools they needed to set up and offered them the support of a Peruvian Agronomist, Nelida.

All 19 members have been trained in how to best care for the guinea pigs , the best type of food for them so they grow to be big and strong, how to breed and maintain a selection of the best guinea pigs for future breeding and they have received training on the best places to sell them.

Nelida our agronomist has been delighted with the success of the project so far, with each family now having either their first guinea pig births or having guinea pigs pregnant with the first litter. The first sale of the guinea pigs will take place in April and the community is going to hold a big food festival in June to celebrate their new businesses and to sell more guinea pigs.

Once these first sales have been made we are confident, as are the women, that the business will become self sustaining. At a recent meeting the cooperative members agreed that they were delighted with their new businesses and the training they had been given and that after a little more support from the agronomist at the April sales of the guinea pigs, they would be able to work together without further financial support to run the project.

The pictures below show proud members of the community with their guinea pigs and Leander Hollings, Director of Mysmallhelp, speaking to the women at a recent meeting.

Following Peros´ financial support for several communities affected by the floods back in January 2010, I have headed back out to Peru to volunteer to see how the communities are getting along- one year on.

First stop was the Desana Giving Dental Mission in Yanahuara. Mysmallhelp (to whom Peros had donated money for the flood victims) and Desana Giving worked together in 2010 to support the flood victims with food, educational materials, clothes, a dental mission and the development of small businesses to help the communities get back on their feet.

Desana Giving, with the help of Mysmallhelp, had arranged a second dental mission in the nearby community of Yanahuara in the Sacred Vally in Peru. A team of 5 student dentists, led by Dr Michael Houk carried out over 650 treatments on over 150 people from the local community. Members of the community who we had helped over the last year were also able to attend and all procedures were free of charge.

Dental care is largely neglected in poor communities in Peru. Education on the importance of dental cleanliness is largely overlooked and it was shocking to see children as young as 5 having 5 or 6 teeth removed as a result of decay. My job was to help with the translation, to reassure the children and adults who were having procedures and to provide advice on the importance of regularly cleaning your teeth. There is no doubt that children have a sweet tooth here, children love to drink Inca Cola and Cocoa Cola but the results of this are really shocking. It was really brought home to me when I was speaking to the mother of one young girl who had just had 4 teeth out. I said that really she should limit fizzy drinks to one a week, because they contained lots of sugar which was bad for her daughter´s teeth. The mother looked completely shocked, like she had never made the link before. It was then that I realised Desana Giving and Mysmallhelp were doing great work in educating a small number of families, but that this was just a small drop in the ocean.

Sometimes it is good to reflect on the differences between our lives in the UK and life for many in the Sacred Valley in Peru. Whilst visiting the community of Paucarbabma, the community where most of our efforts have been made to help them recover after the flooding of January 2010, I took stock of my surroundings.

Below is a photo of one of the women members of our guinea pig businesses kitchen. This lady is developing her own business with the help of Mysmallhelp and Desana Giving. She is rearing guinea pigs to sell in the local market, to make money to invest in more guinea pigs and to use the money to help rebuild her house . She is a business woman. She is trying to better her current situation.

Her kitchen is meagre by our standards and her store ´table´fairly empty. However she tries her best to feed her family and hopefully with the future earnings from her guinea pig business, this food may become more varied and the risk of this store table being bare, should be less.

The cuys have arrived at Cuylandia!

The first guinea pigs have been distributed to the people that have built the homes for their guinea pigs and have grown their food donated by Paskay and have followed all of the training sessions.

According to the “socios” members of the Cuylandia project they are very happy with their guinea pigs and are now more excited than ever about their guinea pig rearing businesses

The balanced guinea pig food has also been distributed to the “socios” members that have their guinea pigs. They need to make sure that they pick up their 1.3kg of guina pig food from the president each day.

The last guinea pig training session took place today at Cuylandia and the guinea pigs are going to receive their tags on Thursday.

SUPERVISION OF THE PRODUCERS

. Each family including in the Cuylandia contract with Paskay are visited on Friday each week to check how they are progressing.

• The growth of their alfafa

• Construcion of the homes for the guinea pigs

• Interest in rearing guinea pigs

• Evaluation on how they have understood the guinea pig rearing training course provided by Paskay

On 1st October 2010 our agronomist reported that 50% of the members have built the homes for their guinea pigs, , 70% had planted the alfafa to ensure that the guinea pigs will have enough food) and 95% are interested in learning more about their new guinea pig rearing business.