A typical week

Some time has passed since we have created this blog. Since then many things happen and we have had quite good response from Bruce Peru Cusco friends. We hope to build on it to further develop our organization and the way we help the kids.

Here comes an overview of the current situation:

We have three schools at the moment; one in Ticatica, one in Huancaro and one in Puquin. All of them are about a 20 minutes drive from the center of Cusco in the poorest suburbs of the city. We work with three Peruvian teachers, Jessica in Huancaro, Marina in Ticatica and Roger in Puquin. Haydee, our social assistant works with the families, problematic kids and continuously looks for more children.

Now we are at the final three months of the school year, which begins in March and ends in December. During this time we prepare our children to be able to enter the state school the following year according to their age group or capabilities. These children have all passed the age when normally kids must enter the primary school, which makes it quite a challenge to catch up with what they missed. In some cases we have kids who dropped out from the state school and we are helping them to get back. During January, February and March we have a so called summer school, where we use the vacation time of the state schools to prepare as many kids as possible to be ready for the state schools during three months. In this case we lower the age limit to 6 years, as kids here enter the first grade at the age of 6.

Depending on our resources we have one or two international volunteers helping each Peruvian teacher, but more volunteers are always welcome as kids need a lot of attention. Besides working with the kids in the classroom from 9 am till noon volunteers are preparing food for the children every day and helping them to receive medical assistance during the afternoons.

We have we introduced some reforms recently: (the four of us - as on average we were four volunteers in the center).

First of all our schools start nowadays at 9.00 o'clock instead of 9.30 as earlier. There is a weekly meeting on Friday's where the teachers plan the week - we will still revamp it a bit but we have some coordination nowadays... We have also introduced everyday reports from school with attendance lists etc. So we know how many kids are in the school and what is needed for the next day. The teachers are responsible for filling in those reports. This will also help our social worker to follow-up and talk to the parents in case they do not show up in school.

We have uploaded lots of new pictures especially from our Ticatica school. Most of the new pictures were made by Alanna and are just excellent!!! We have not succeeded with making Bruce Peru friends upload the pictures to flickr so this week we will continue with sending personal invitations to join the group. For the time being you can see our pictures. Check the Huancaro and Puquin pictures.



We will also shortly have meetings with kids that have graduated from our schools last two years. Unfortunately we will be closing one of the schools as we do not have enough kids there...this will probably take place next week... We will try to move the kids from the closed school to our Huancaro school. At the same time we will start looking for kids either at the same location or at a new location to reopen the third school next year when the new school year starts.

We have also restarted the pub quiz - for the time being at The Real McCoy pub with full house and to our own surprise with a full blown success. Last week we have also had our first which was a great success - mainly thanks to the queen of the night - Amelia - our new volunteer made a great show and we have managed to raise 140 USD. As of now we have altogether raised in total USD 1220 which is more than GREAT!!! The biggest amount of it thanks to Alanna's dad...We are really happy that there are people who are willing to help like this. We and all the kids are greatly indebted to them and everyone who has helped so far.


We are also in the middle of organizing a big party and the most fancy club in Cusco - where we will have a cooking show, dancing etc and all proceeds from the tickets will come to us - not to mention that everyone who comes will have to bring some clothing as donation - it will take place on the 27th of September...

We will also get a short story in the next South American Explorer's Club (SAEC). We should also introduce a little perk for the volunteers. Whoever will sign up with us for at least one month would get the membership of SAEC for free.

So things are moving : our next biggest task is to change to certain extent the teaching plan since it seems still a bit chaotic...introduction of individual books for each child is high on our agenda...it is a bit difficult since we have such a big age difference between kids and different goals...Of course we do face challenges with the health of the kids, and we manage very well with the dentists but do not have any good clinic that we provide optical services to our kids.

This is more or less what has recently happened and the challenges we have. We are looking forward to your pictures, and comments...