MySmallhelp Cusco

It seems that somehow I am now the “madrina” (fairy god mother) of the first new house which has been built in the Huayroncoyocpampa community. It had this honour because as a “gringa” I am seen as someone that will bring them luck and hopefully abundance.  Norma lives with here husband Alberto and 2 children Kevin and Carola.  They lost their home in the January floods and have been living in a tent ever since.  I met Norma’s family in January when we first brought volunteers to the community to help with the salvaging materials operation

I kindly accepted their request and the celebration continued in true quechuan style. We were served a delicious meal of steak and pasta (which is also traditional food for when a new house is built). The new house has had to be built on the same land as the previous one as they have no other land and there is nobody has offered them anywhere else to live. There was a hope that the local government would be providing the whole community with land for relocation but unfortunately this has not yet been provided. The family were struggling to survive in their tent because of the extreme temperatures and therefore chose to take a loan to be able to afford to live in a house again.

Normas family and many of them like them are urgently in need of support and would be very grateful for any small donation you might be able to give to make a difference to their lives.

As you can see from the photos I was presented with 2 clay bulls (for good luck) and a cross decorated with flowers. This was placed on the roof of the house for good luck and I then explained how it was an honour for me to be the “madrina” of their house and although I won’t be able to afford to give them my own money I would do my best to try and find support from other people around the world that really want to do something to help other human beings in need.

On Sunday 15th August, all 21 “socios” of the Cuylandia contract from Paucarbamba were picked up in a mini bus to visit the Cuylandia training centre for the first time. The community members were all excited about going to their centre and to learning more about the project. The first training session was run by guest speaker Richard, who has had experienced setting up similar businesses for the international charity World Vision and other organizations.

Richard motivated all of the members by explaining that by thinking positive with a clear vision of where they want to go they can all really make their small businesses work. They just need to put effort in to looking after the animals and following the guidelines of the CHDS agronomist, Nelida.

The initial training session began at 10am and was followed by a practical session building a “galpon” – guinea pig pen with room for

30 guinea pigs. The “socios” learnt about guinea pig rearing as a business and the best type of guinea pig homes for industrial rearing.

Once the guest guinea pigs were in their new home the training centre was decorated and the party began!

Over the next 2 weeks Nelida will be visiting each of the 21 families to supervise the building of their guinea pig pens near to their homes.

A big thank you once again to Desana Giving for donating an additional $3000 to the Cuylandia project to purchase the materials for the store room/training centre which was built by the Paucarbamba community members in just 10 days!

Dear Mysmallhelp trustees and friends,

As you all know the Casa Hogar del Sol is urgently in need of funds to raise money to continue the Cuylandia project here in Peru.

I am writing to see if anyone would be able to help us with fundraising by donating funds directly to sell books through the volunteer house and other networks here and abroad. Many people have been interested in purchasing the book that Meg designed on Blurb  and sent to us here in Peru. Unfortunately it is extremely expensive to get these books out here and therefore near impossible to be able to sell them and make a profit on them here.

Cristian and I went to visit a printer shop in Cusco on Friday  to find out about costs of printing the book which Megan printed on blurb. We were told that they could make the book in even better quality for a minimum of $5 per copy (if we print 1000). They showed us other printing materials that they have produced for organizations such as World Vision.

Cristian would really like to print a photo book about the Casa Hogar del Sol projects to help raise funds and raise awareness of our work as well as his photography. We have found out that the minimum print run of 200 copies would cost about $7 to print here in Peru ($1400 in total). I believe that we would be able to sell the book here for about $14 making 100% margin.

Printing the Casa Hogar del Sol photo book will not only help Casa Hogar del Sol to raise funds but will also help Cristian with his photography career (which is part of our project aim).

Please can you let me know your thoughts and if anyone would be interested in ordering some of the books to try and sell during the run up to Christmas.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon

Kindest regards

Leander

Thank you Carlos for sending us the designs for the training centre. The BIG question is what colour are we going for!!

Thank you once again George and Kathy for your continued support. The bricks arrived yesterday and the volunteers are coming back tomorrow to help with the construction.

We should be on schedule for the inauguration and starting the training with the first 19 families on Saturday 14th August. Fingers crossed!

With love to you all

Leander

Monday 2nd August 2010

A lot has been going on in the world of Casa Hogar del Sol in Peru over the past week. Last Thursday we had a further 5 volunteers visit us from Loki Cusco and we managed to move the last 500 bricks from the Paucarbamba community. We now have the first group of 19 families which will be receiving guinea pigs and training from the Cuylandia centre (due to start on Saturday August 14th). The community members nnw have enough bricks to complete the perimerter wall and the building of the actual training centre will start tomorrow tomorrow.

The head builder has estimated that it will take one week for the workers to complete the building so we are estimating 2 weeks!

3000 more bricks and building material need to be bought to build the training centre and George and Kathy from Desana Giving http://www.desanagiving.org/  have kindly offered to donate these. A big thank you to Desana Giving goes out from the Casa Hogar del Sol Peru team and the Paucarbamba community members.

The 10 day dental campaign has started in partnership with Odontologos Fronteras and Desana Giving.and the  17 volunteer dentists have so far treated about 500 patients.  All of the dentists are sleeping and eating in the (3 bedroom) volunteer house in Paucarbamba and travelling to community schools each morning to work 8 hour non-stop days!

A volunteer Australian Podiatrist (David) was found at Hearts Café and has joined the dental campaign this week. He has been measuring up for shoes which are going to be distributed during the Christmas chocolatada campaign with Desana Giving.

A big thank you to everyone for their big help this week!

An Ilkley aid worker is hoping to set Peruvian families up in business after their homes and livelihoods were washed away in devastating floods six months ago.

Leander Hollings, pictured, is appealing for £14,000 to establish a training centre which would enable residents in the Cusco region to rear guinea pigs for the domestic and international markets.

Emergency relief has now subsided after torrents of rain washed away roads, crops and thousands of homes in January. Rivers burst their banks causing landslides to block vital routes of communication and tourists were filmed stranded on the Inca ruins of Macchu Picchu.

Leander, who runs the charity Mysmallhelp, helped set up a volunteer house to provide food, shelter, clothes, dental care, building materials and school supplies.

Now working as a director for the charity Casa Hogar del Sol, she said: “We don’t want to “give” anymore without helping to create businesses and income for the flood victims.

“Our dream is to set up cuylandia, a guinea pig rearing training centre, and accompanying guinea pig businesses for at least 25 families before the end of this year.”

Leander’s appeals for flood victims in January were boosted by a £10,000 donation from Fair Trade coffee company Peros. Casa Hogar del Sol is also supported by Ilkley’s Happiness Centre and the town’s pop up charity shop Ayni, which sells Peruvian goods.

Leander added: “We are still urgently looking for funds to keep the project going on an ongoing basis. We are also looking for volunteers to come and work with us for a minimum of one month, ideally with basic Spanish.”

Details of how to make a donation can be found at mysmallhelp.org.

It has been an extremely busy week for me and the Casa Hogar del Sol team. The Loki volunteers have now increased their visits to twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) to help us to move the bricks to Cuylandia as quickly as possible. We have worked hard to move more than 1100 bricks this week to the new land and the wall is gradually going up.

This week Loki have donated sugar and rice to one of our partner schools in Pachar and a further 250 soles towards the truck hire. A big thank you once again to everyone at Loki for their continued support.

The children at Paucarbamba enjoyed their first English class on Thursday with me. They each received an exercise book and wrote down their names and the teachers name together with the word English and they remembered the numbers and the way to say “What is your name?”

which was taught to them last week. They loved playing word games outside with their new ball and were sad when the class had to end.

Paul and I took Lourdes to Cusco for her first trip to look for ways of improving her life, including possibilities for wheel chairs, work and education opportunities and a possible new home.

We have been to visit the directors of schools in Pachar, Chilca, Patacancha, Phiry and Ollantaytambo who have all signed contracts to confirm that we can use their schools as locations for the upcoming dental campaign.

Watch this space!

The adobe brick moving mission continues

The wall around Cuylandia has nearly finished but the Paucarbamba workers are still short of 3000 bricks to complete their job. This Thursday an additional 6 families from the Paucarbamba community had their 260 bricks ready to move. The Casa Hogar del Sol team put up posters all around Ollantaytambo and Kim put up posters around the Loki hostel for additional volunteers to help with moving these 1310.

Unfortunately only 5 volubteers turned up from Loki and 7 people from Casa Hogar del Sol. As 2 trucks had been hired we had our work cut out. After finding 2 additional (drunken) men in Ollantaytambo willing to do some hard labour we managed to get the bricks moved in 3 runs between the 2 locations working from 10am until 6pm. A long hard day and lots of aching muscles!

 A big thank you once again to Loki for their continued to support and for their donation of 250 soles (approximately £55) towards the cost of moving the bricks.

Dear Friends of Mysmallhelp and Casa Hogar del Sol,

Thank you all for supporting the flood victims of the sacred valley Peru over the past 6 months.   I am now working as the director of the partner charity “Asociacion Casa Hogar del Sol” together with the founders Carlos Gibaja and Dr Sharron Forrest. For more details of the work that we have done since the floods please see the previous entries in this blog. 

You will see that we have set up a volunteer house,  helped to provide food, shelter, clothes,blankets, dental care, english classes, building materials, school supplies etc. We don’t want to “give” anymore without helping to create businesses and income for the flood victims.

 Our dream is to set up Cuylandia (a guinea pig rearing training centre) and accompanying guinea pig businesses for at least 25 families before the end of this year. We need to raise approximately £14,000 for Cuylandia in 2010 and would greatly appreciate your support on this. Any funds raised above £14,000 will allow us to provide guinea pig businesses to even more families that were affected by the January floods.

To avoid paying bank charges UK donors please make donations directly to the Mysmallhelp UK bank account – Lloyds TSB, Sort Code 30-90-57 account number 02074080 marking your donation CUSCO APPEAL.  All other donors please make donations  to the MSH paypal account leander.hollings@mysmallhelp.org or directly to the Casa Hogar del Sol Banco de Credito del Peru (Sucursal Cusco), Avenida del Sol 189, Cusco, Peru, Account number 285-17299567-1-75 Swift code BC PL PE PL

Once you have made a donation please do email me to let me know how your payment has been sent so that I can confirm when your donation has been received.

Please remember your SMALL help can really make a big difference!

I look forward to hearing from you soon

Kindest regards

 Leander Hollings

Our 15 days living and volunteering in Ollantaytambo have come to an end and for this entry I´m going to do something a little different.

As we were some of the initial volunteers with the Casa Hogar Del Sol NGO and may want to give future workers an idea for the work available I´m going to first list out what we did as far as labor during our stay and then later, what we did for fun, on time off, etc. Their main project is to create Cuylandia aka Guinea Pig Land , a long-term small business opportunity for the communities of Pacuarbamba and Ancapachar that suffered massive flooding in January 2010. Believe it or not, Cuys-Guinea pigs form an integral part of most rural Peruvians´ diets as they have for 1000s of years and Cuylandia is to be a training center, classroom, and pen, for the communities to learn how to raise and sell Cuys for profit. The project is in its construction and planning phase but has gotten a strong response from community members. We still haven´t tried eating Guinea pig yet but I hope to before the end of the trip. The meat is said to taste like a mix of pork and chicken? Here goes:

1. Moved, transported, and stacked 1000´s of hand made adobe bricks (made of local mud and straw and weighing 45 lbs each) via wheel barrow, moving truck, ¨fire lines,¨and sheer strength for Cuylandia walls.
2. Helped erect the Cuylandia wall with local workers using the adobes, mud, and other tools.
3. Assisted local man with forming 250-300 adobe bricks to rebuild his flooded home.
4. Visited local Pacuarbamba Elementary School two times and taught one initial English class for 90 minutes to 12 students ages 6-9. Volunteers will teach English at this school every thursday afternoon and play with the kids of course. Students speak Spanish and Quechua.
5. Contributed apprx 1000 Soles or $330 to the project over the 15 days.
6. Wrote 3 blog entries on the Casa Hogar del sol web site at http://www.mysmallhelp.blogspot.com/ Check them out.
7.  Went to Urubamba, nearby bigger town, to purchase water and other supplies.
8. Cleaned volunteer house.

Non Volunteer Activites during my time:

1. Won trivia night at unnamed secret english bar (prize: Swiss Chocolate and free beer) vs. many other American volunteers with the awamaki organization.
2. Put up with 48 hours withouth electricity the first weekend we arrived. I guess power outages are not uncommon here but this was the longest in years. So dark! and kind of a fun way to get to know a town.
3. Learned what it´s like to have food poisoning. I spent literally all day and night the 4th of July in bed puking and sweating but after about 24 hours felt good as new if a little weak. I think it was from eating a little of uncooked salad and will be more careful in the future. I don´t remember ever being this sick in my whole life. I´m glad that I wasn´t in a hostel or hotel and had my own room and comfy bed for this. At least I was able to hear some fireworks…
4. Attended 2 going away parties for British friend of the organization Kirstie in Ollanta and Cusco. Celebrated by eating out, dancing to live music and then bad dance music at discoteques, and chatting.
5. Toured the great Ollantayambo Incan Ruins the day of the Ollanta Raymi festival June 29. The ruins normally cst $30 each but got in for free. The fiesta and reenactment celebrates the towns founding story of great warrior Ollanta leading people to battle and winning the heart of the Cheifs daughter in pre-Incan times. Actually reminds me of the White Bear Lake story a little bit.
6. Hiked to the Salineras salt mines nearby and wached the community´s ancient method for harvesting salt. Still in use today and delicious. Also hiked to smaller Incan ruins (don´t remember name) outside Ollanta.
7. Applied to graduate assistantship with school of Public Health at University of Minnesota.
8. Met and got to know many great Ollantino guys and gals and other international volunteers at the volunteer house and in the community, especially through the NGO´s leader Leander. Many locals our age work as guides for the Ollanta ruins, Macchu Picchu and others. Many study English and Tourism in School.
9. ¨Cooked¨many meals in the volunteer house kitchen and drank lots of tea! Does making ramen, grilled cheese, or mac n´cheese count as cooking?
10. River Rafting the Urubamba with KB Tambo tours also owned by a Minnesotan.
11. Practiced beauboup Spanish with other workers and local friends and through reading. Still not at where I´d like to be though. Many locals also like practicing their English on us.
12. Manuevered the public transportation system and hitchiked a lot. Most days we had to catch ´combi´ buses to the Cuylandia work site or other towns. These are basically 12 passenger vans that they fill to the brim 25 people not being abnormal with tons of produce or baggage or whatever on the roof. No seat belts, no personal space, but quite cheap.
13. Ate Anticuchos 5 times- skewered and marinaded beef hearts with spicy sauce. Delicious and don´t really seem skechy at all. Drank Chicha- home made corn beer only once for fear of the water that they use being contaminated.
14. Fished the fast flowing Urubamba river for trout once in the peruvian style as our friend Christian taught us. We tied fishing line around a 20 oz plastic bottle to use as our pole and then used worms on a hook like usual. Christian actually hooked a little trout and we all had bites. Not really recommended as river is nasty, sort of an open sewer drain for whole valley but fun nonetheless.
15. Visited internet café too many times!

 So there you have it. I´m really glad we spent some time in Ollanta getting to know the town and many people. Much better than playing the tourist like we´ve felt for much of the rest of our trip. The town itself is gorgeous with ruins looking down into the valley from mountains and hills on both sides. Also the old town is one of the remaining examples of Incan City planning wih running water flowing along three of the main streets, huge Incan double doorways, and interior patios and gardens.

Lastly, I think we´re going to have some type of fundraiser party, pub crawl or event for Cuylandia when we get back in Sept and you all are invited.

Next up: Lake Titicaca and Bolivia.

Go Twins,

Dan Henry