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!

Heart-Links would like to thank the late Raymond “Pete” Cheele, and his wife, Mabel Cheele, who predeceased him, for their generous bequest in support of Heart-Links’ work in Peru. Committed Catholics, the Cheeles were close friends of the Zadorsky family and followed the mission work of Heart-Links founder Sister Janet Zadorsky with interest and encouragement.

Because of this gift, the Esperanza Centre for Alternative Education is on a solid foundation—literally. The bequest has enabled Heart-Links’ partner ACIES to complete the foundation, retaining wall and perimeter of this afterschool centre in a marginal neighbourhood in Cajamarca, Peru.

The Centre, which currently works out of borrowed space in an abandoned market, provides education and homework support for impoverished Indigenous children from a perspective that values their Indigenous heritage. As Indigenous people and recent arrivals from the countryside, these children face increased racism and discrimination and the dismissal of their culture.

Because of the bequest made by the Cheele estate and the contributions of other Heart-Links friends and supporters, Heart-Links is within reach of its goal (just $4,250 to go!) to finance completion of the Centre in 2018 and programming for the children it will serve.