A real highlight of my trip so far has been a visit to a tiny community called Pumamarca, located 10km from the centre of Cusco. Pip, a friend of mine from my CSU uni days, has just moved here to help coordinate a volunteer program run by an organisation called Peru's Challenge. One of the program's main activities has been to renovate the local school and round up students. Apparently this was done via a community door-knock, where volunteers handed out bananas as incentives for local families to get their kids out of the fields and into school. It worked - the school now has 150 students! The community has really got on board and many of the fathers have helped, and continue to help, renovate the school.
Other problems the community faces include a water supply that is something like 200 times over the safe drinking limit! So the program has established water reservoirs and introduced filtered drinking water. Domestic violence and alcoholism are also issues within the community. A mothers' group was started as a way of making women in the community self-sufficient. The mothers are required to meet three times a week at the school where they have learned the art of making handcrafts, such as knitted goods, which they can now sell to tourists. This means they have an independent source of income which is divided up, some going to the maker of the product herself and some to materials. At the end of last year there were enough funds to purchase Christmas hampers, and there was even some left over after that. The mothers collectively decided to use the remaining funds to realise their dream of visiting Machu Picchu.
