Help Print Books for Rural Libraries in Cajamarca
Did you know that just $10 can print a book? Books have the power to inspire, teach, and connect us to new ideas and traditions. Your donation will go toward printing books for rural libraries in Cajamarca, bringing magic, knowledge, and opportunity to communities in northern Peru.

• $10 will print 8 books 
• $50 will print 38 books 
• $100 will print 77 books 

Your gift supports not only books but also the many other meaningful projects Heart-Links undertakes to build solidarity and create opportunities in Peru.

Join Our Engagement Committee

Have you ever wanted to contribute your creativity and talents to a cause that matters? Our Engagement Committee is gearing up to make our 2025 Share the Love event a truly unforgettable celebration of solidarity.

As a committee member, you’ll help:

• Plan and organize this vibrant February event.
• Design creative ways to engage donors and share stories of impact.
• Highlight the inspiring work of our Peruvian partners.

It’s an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals, develop valuable skills, and make a tangible difference. Deadline to express your interest: December 12, 2024.

Explore Peru on a Solidarity Trip

Looking for an adventure with purpose? Our July 2025 Solidarity Trip offers an immersive experience in northern Peru, where you’ll learn from and work alongside inspiring changemakers. From the Andes mountains to bustling cities, you’ll deepen your understanding of social justice, community development, and global solidarity. Fill out our application today!

Application deadline: January 31, 2025.

Ways to Get Involved This Giving Tuesday

1. Print Books: Your donation brings the magic of books to communities in northern Peru.
2. Volunteer: Join our Engagement Committee or explore other opportunities to support Heart-Links.
3. Donate: Your contributions directly support impactful projects in education, health, and gender equality.
4. Spread the Word: Share our mission with your network and inspire others to join our journey.

Together, let’s continue building bridges of friendship and support. Browse Your Help in navigation to learn more about these opportunities and how you can make a difference.

You can help a child succeed.

This GOOD DEED will provide primary schoolchildren with afterschool educational reinforcement in reading, mathematics, arts and crafts, and social interaction. It will be led by Heart-Links’ partner Madre Oliva Association in Nuevo Mocupe. This program will run six days a week, working closely with parents and teachers to ensure children progress. Nutritional snacks will also be supplied. 

The program will help these children get back on track with their learning (and have fun doing it).

Every child deserves a quality education. But without support, these children are at risk of dropping out. This GOOD DEED aims to help these children succeed at primary school, leading to further schooling and more opportunities as the children grow.

For impoverished people in Peru, education remains one of the best routes to higher incomes and greater job security. Giving these children a more solid foundation is the long-term aim of this GOOD DEED.

If you want to provide additional support to the 24 Canadian charities that are participating in the 24 GOOD DEEDS Charity Advent Calendar, click the button below.

To help you get ready, we wanted to let you know about a very special initiative Heart-Links is taking part in this giving season: the 24 GOOD DEEDS charity advent calendar.

• For just $24 you can support 24 projects around the world
• All projects are implemented by registered Canadian charities
• Order one for yourself or as a meaningful gift (you can add a personalized message)
• Available as a 3D physical calendar and as a digital version

Pssst! One of the projects is run by Heart-Links’ partner Madre Oliva Association.

Here’s how the calendar works: On December 1st, open door number one. The next day, door number two. Behind each door you’ll learn what you donation is achieving. More information about each project will be available on the 24GoodDeeds website.

This holiday season, join us in making the world a better place, one GOOD DEED at a time.

Rob has clocked more than 34 km so far and he’s still hoping to reach his goal of 125 km by month’s end. Can you cheer Rob on by making a donation?

“I help out with Heart-Links because of its local roots,” he says. “When I was looking to help with something in my spare time, I discovered the organization and have done what I can for just over a year and a half now.”

Rob has called London, Ontario, home for over twenty years. He lives in Oakridge with his wife, Kristin, and their nine-year-old daughter, Stella. He works in gastroenterology, and in his spare time, he enjoys music and fitness. 

“Using my runs to help create awareness for this incredible local organization while also holding myself accountable to keep moving is a great marriage!” he says. 

In other words, Rob is somebody who wants to do his part to create a more just world. As Rob says, “We have a lot to be thankful for . . . so why not give back and send a few dollars to those less fortunate?!”

Every little bit counts, so consider making your donation to Heart-Links today.

Thank you, Rob, for your dedication. And good luck with the rest of your run!

P.S. You can follow Rob on Instagram (@rjcrate) for updates.

*banner photo by Hans Splinter under this creative commons license

Maria Saclupe has a dream: to raise chickens to help feed her family and increase their earnings.

Maria lives in San Isidro with her three children and her husband. Working together with other families in the community, they grow vegetables and raise guinea pigs and chickens. But they need incubators and chicken coops to get their chicken business off the ground. Will you help Maria and her family get through this pandemic by making a donation today?

Maria is one of many hard-working mothers in San Isidro who are trying to improve the lives of their families. In 2017, el Niño devastated her community. “The water washed away almost everything we had,” she says. “The community had many needs but no support from the government.”

Heart-Links donors worked with Centro Esperanza to rebuild the community well and set up a new irrigation system. The project provided training in sustainable farming methods, paid the legal fees for incorporation and supplied the first laying hens.

Donors to Heart-Links were there for Maria and the people of San Isidro after the 2017 floods. Will you be there for them now?

COVID-19 has brought its own challenges. Maria’s husband used to work as a day labourer on farms outside their community. But travel is not permitted right now, so he is unemployed. Maria is not giving up. But she needs your help.

“The laying hens and other supports Heart-Links have given me have helped me,” she says. “I sell eggs to support my family . . . The incubators and chicken coops will let us increase the number of chickens and more money will enter our home. It motivates me to work to help with our family expenses and improve our lives.”

Donations to Heart-Links not only help with this project but also with other community-driven projects we support in northern Peru. Your kindness makes it possible for us to help many families like Maria’s.

In San Isidro, those donations go a long, long way. Just $2.13 a day can make a family’s dream of growing their chicken business come true.

And that’s not all. “Because of the training we receive, we’ve learned how to organize, which makes us eligible to receive support from other institutions,” Maria says. And because of that training, Maria and two other women now form part of the cooperative’s executive committee.

The people of San Isidro are committed to sharing with families who do not form part of their cooperative, too. That’s why each participant has pledged to donate five of the laying hens they raise to other impoverished families in the district.

“Emotionally, I’m given hope that my life can change with this support,” Maria says.

Help change Maria’s life. Help make a dream come true. Donate today.

You can help Maria’s family get through this pandemic. Just $2.13 a day can help her grow her chicken business. Your donation of $63.90 could help Maria’s or another family for an entire month!

Already a volunteer for the local parks committee, she wanted to learn what else she could do to improve life in her community. So last year, she signed up for the leadership school run by Heart-Links’ partner Centro Santa Angela.

When the pandemic hit last March, Nélida didn’t hesitate. She immediately started using her new leadership skills to help others.

She sought the support of a city psychologist and began a series of virtual workshops for women in her community to raise their self-esteem and help them make decisions. The workshops also taught the women to resolve conflicts and encouraged them to take an active role in their community.

As one workshop participant said, “During this time of pandemic, it especially helped older women like me because it distracted us, motivated us to keep going and to know how to take care of ourselves.”

Donations to Heart-Links helped Nélida become a leader and she in turn empowered a whole group of women. She helped them through the uncertainty the pandemic has created. Will you continue to make women’s leadership training a priority?

To promote more female leaders in northern Peru, donate today.

2020 has shown the world the value of good leadership. This is doubly true in Peru, where the country’s leadership was recently put to the test by a political crisis that briefly left the country without a president. In the middle of a pandemic, Peru’s leaders failed their fellow citizens exactly when people needed them most.

But the story doesn’t end there. People spoke out, they stood up and demanded that their leaders respect the democratic order. Women and young people were at the forefront of this movement. And they won.

Nélida has shown us that good leadership is critical to a healthy civil society. Leaders like Nélida make a difference. Your donation makes a difference. You can foster a new kind of leader in Peru: leaders who are democratic, transparent, inclusive and committed to human and community development.

Nélida told the group of women she was teaching, “We women are all of us brave, fighters, beautiful . . . Let’s get out there and conquer the world—this world that’s waiting for you, for me, for all of us.”

At the end of this month, Nélida will graduate from the leadership school, but her commitment to improving the lives of women in her community doesn’t end there.

“We’re taking baby steps that will lead to many other things in the future,” she says.

We’re all hoping for a better year in 2021. But we can do more than hope. We can invest today in the kind of future we’d like to see: a future where leaders put people and planet first.

Through a donation to Heart-Links, you can invest in leaders like Nélida. Let’s learn from this year of uncertainty and upheaval. Let’s recommit to building a just world together.

P.S. Donate by midnight on December 31st to receive your 2020 charitable tax receipt.

For Heart-Links’ partners in northern Peru that means helping people in their communities stay safe. Our partners are

• checking in with community leaders
• offering mental health and emotional support
• distributing food and PPE
• promoting measures that prevent contagion
• supporting home-based income generation projects
• ensuring government aid gets to the people who need it

Lambayeque province, where most of Heart-Links’ partners live and work, has become the epicentre of the disease in northern Peru. Although the capital reports by far the most confirmed cases, the fatality rate in Lambayeque (now 10.64%) is about 6 times that of Lima. Hospitals in the north are overrun. Two days ago, newspapers reported that Lambayeque had only one ICU bed and one ventilator left in the entire province.

You can help our partners #flattenthecurve in northern Peru by donating today to Heart-Links. Let them know we are #inittogether.

#GivingTuesdayNow #inittogether #OneWorld

As just one example of the work Heart-Links supports, let me tell you about Maria and her family, who live in Nuevo Mocupe, in the Zaña Valley in northern Peru.

Maria has seven children and is caring for them on her own. Three of her children—Nelver, Michael and Josey—have disabilities. Often Maria can only work one day a week because of poor health. For years she struggled to find her children the care they needed, but due to the rules in the local public school, they often faced expulsion when they had an outburst. She says the staff at the school insist on “more medicine, more medicine.” They are not very patient with the children, she says, and push to have them medicated, even when they have not been diagnosed.

Maria finally found help for her children because of you. She enrolled Nelver and Michael in the supportive disabilities program run by Madre Oliva Association—a project that is funded by Heart-Links donors. Nelver, Michael and Josey are now in school because of the group’s advocacy and all three now have proper diagnoses. Please consider a gift of $25 to continue to support this important work.

“There’s no way I could ever repay what I’ve been given here,” Maria told us when Heart-Links travelled to Nuevo Mocupe earlier this fall to get an update on how this project is going. The diagnosis of disabilities in Peru is very expensive, leaving many families in the dark about what their children may be struggling with. A diagnosis can mean everything in determining the right therapies, medicine and care.

Madre Oliva Association works closely with representatives from the school and the local health unit to ensure people living with developmental and other disabilities in their communities receive the attention they need and do not face discrimination. With your support, they can provide medications, consultation with specialists, food and psychological and life skills counselling.

Our team couldn’t have been prouder after meeting Maria and hearing that her and her children’s lives are much better because of the gifts made by Heart-Links donors. She is just one example of how important this program is for individuals and families facing barriers to accessing critical services. Everyone deserves to enjoy full participation in the life of their communities. You can help create a more robust and sustained support system for individuals with disabilities.

Thank you for considering our request to donate to Heart-Links so we can fund projects like this one.

P.S. As we celebrate Heart-Links’ 25th anniversary, we hope you will consider making a special gift in honour of this milestone!

The more you give, the more chances for us to win! #GivingChallengeCA

Your donation will support Heart-Links’ project with the Rural Libraries Network of Cajamarca. The network is publishing a series of locally produced books about Indigenous knowledge and culture for 500 remote libraries in the Peruvian Andes. Learn more about this great project here.

Your ongoing support is what makes our work possible. With it we have been able to gradually reach out to new communities and expand the number of programs we support.

Heart-Links currently funds all or part of 12 projects in northern Peru. We have sent $150,000 to Peru this year to finance these projects, and we expect to spend a similar amount there next year.

Your dollars have led to real improvements in the lives of real people: a little boy in Cajamarca has a safe space to express himself, a mother in Zaña is building her self-esteem, her support network and her earnings by producing and selling traditional crafts with a women’s circle, a young man in Chiclayo has become an ally in the struggle against violence against women.

Thank you for taking this journey of solidarity with us, for saying to people in another part of the world, “I see you and I am with you.”

To keep our work going strong into 2019 and beyond, we ask you to consider becoming a monthly donor. Even a small monthly donation goes a long, long way at Heart-Links.

Here are some examples of what your gift can do:

$10/month

Reprint 100 copies of a book that preserves the culture of Indigenous communities and fosters literacy in the mountains of Cajamarca.

$20/month

Give a child in the Zaña Valley the opportunity to attend an after-school program proven to improve participant behaviour and learning outcomes in their regular school program.

$30/month

Give a teenager in the Zaña Valley the opportunity to engage with peers in workshops on self-esteem, healthy sexuality, social media etiquette, cultural identity and more.

$45/month

Fund 30 days of a community-led action plan to rehabilitate parks, plant trees, clean up garbage and reduce waste in an impoverished neighbourhood of 100 families in Chiclayo.

Please use our printable Donor Form, choosing either a monthly donation or a one-time gift. Or Donate Now using our online form.

In solidarity,

Heart-Links Lazos de Corazón