Articles - Miscellaneous

Project Peru - Sarah Custance

A number of you may recall lassooing a llama, filling Smartie tubes or donating in any way to the Pepper Popper fundraising activities for Peru in the Autumn of 2007! The intention of this event, after a morning service, was to raise funds for a charity - Project Peru - who Sarah Custance was going to support physically and financially during the later part of 2007. Sarah raised her own funds to finance the trip there but sought to raise money for the charity to enable building work to continue on a new refuge for women and children in Lima (Zapallal) - the capital of Peru.

Many people were very generous in giving and supporting Project Peru - and the donations during and after the service raised £353.54 plus further donations before and after the event. If anyone still wants to contribute to the work they can via http://www.justgiving.com/sarahandnat

Sarah, with a friend she travelled to Peru with, Natalie, managed to raise over £3,000 in total (latest figure £3,119.04) - for the charity. Sarah has been building, plastering, brick laying, teaching, helping in a soup kitchen and meeting local families and children to understand their life and problems better. It has been a very moving and rewarding experience.
Sarah witnessed at first hand the building work this money was able to fund - it was very gratefully received. Below are a few portions of her e mails back from Peru that you may find of interest?

All the people here are lovely and really friendly so I feel very welcome. First day just spent it around the refuge getting to know people and kids etc. Today we went to the place where we are helping build. It is two bus rides from Project Peru's base and the poverty there was horrific. Really hard not to cry, the conditions people live in is unbelievable. There is no sewage system so people have to throw everything on the streets. We met an amazing woman called Rosa who co-ordinates the work up there when explaining the children's background she just burst into tears as there is a lot of abuse and ill health and people cannot even afford the transport to the hospital never mind the treatment. So many children die from really basic illness. There is a soup kitchen, a nursery for children under five, many of which move to Project Peru facilities when older. There is a real need for what we are helping to build which will house children and mothers many of whom are being abused but also to educate the mothers as many of them need skills to get work, ie sewing, gardening or cooking. Another big problem is there are very few men around so a lot of the mums leave there babies and children on their own all day to go and work.

I have been teaching this week it has gone really well, bar the fact we have gained a couple of toddlers who can't even sit on benches, they wandered in and I am drawing the line at highchairs... !!!!!!! we also had stray dogs in the classroom today that wouldn't get out of the room .. I had to look after the children as others were 'legging' it around the room to get the dogs out from under the tables!

Many thanks to everyone who has supported Sarah - she has just left the charity now and is travelling through Bolivia to Brazil. For more details on the work you can go to http://www.projectperu.org.uk/

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