Our team visited all three regions where Heart-Links’ partners work: Cajamarca, in the northeastern Andes; the Zaña Valley, in the central coast lowlands; and the Chiclayo Metropolitan Area, also in the central coast lowlands, one hour south from Zaña.

In Cajamarca, we met with the volunteers who run the Rural Libraries Network, a 54-year-old association that supplies books to almost 300 remote libraries across Cajamarca and adjacent provinces. In addition to publishing books, the network promotes literacy and records and preserves traditional knowledge and culture. A principle tool is the Enciclopedia Campesina, a project financed by Heart-Links. We stayed at the Rural Libraries guesthouse in Cajamarca. The building is also the home of the main library, offices and meeting rooms.

Also in Cajamarca is ACIES, a community development organization that works in the impoverished city neighborhood of Quiritimayo. In the Quiritimayo Cultural Centre, ACIES offers an afterschool program that includes educational support, ecological workshops and cleanups, reading circles, writing groups, and art classes. ACIES also works with women, delivering workshops in mental health self-care and artisanal training. ACIES runs similar programs in the rural village of Pomabamba, as well an alternative school for impoverished children and youth, where they also learn about water conservation, gardening, and raising small animals.

In Zaña, we met the members of Latidos. In communities up and down the Zaña Valley, this association runs afterschool programs, breakfast and lunch programs, mental health workshops, entrepreneurial training for women and reforestation and forest protection. Latidos is strongly involved in the local business community, including agrobusiness, and works with them to practice corporate social responsibility, such as hiring locally. We stayed in the lovely Latidos guesthouse.

Our other partner in Zaña is Madre Oliva Association. They run an afterschool program in the rural hamlet of Nuevo Mocupe, where children receive educational support and recreation. The association also delivers food aid, clothing, medication and mental health training and counselling  to approximately 20 vulnerable families.

Finally, we went to the bustling metropolis of Chiclayo, and stayed in a charming modest downtown hotel. We first met with members of Centro Esperanza. This agency runs numerous programs from their Chiclayo office and premises, but the program Heart-Links supports is in Coloche, a rural community in Lambayeque. There, Centro Esperanza has started a women’s farming collective called MUFUM (Women for a Better Future). The women of MUFUM raise and market fast-growing guinea pigs. Centro Esperanza has provided production training, ecological workshops, leadership development and mental health programs. The project is thriving.

Our final visit was with Centro Santa Angela. Founded 41 years ago by the Ursuline Sisters of Chatham, the centre promotes ecological communities in the impoverished urban district of José Leonardo Ortiz, assisting local residents to rescue parkland, develop community spirit, and end harmful ecological practices. In its downtown office, Centro Santa Angela runs programs, also sponsored by Heart-Links, aimed at ending family violence and misogyny, developing community leaders and good citizens, and exercising vigilance against corruption.

It was wonderful to see the positive impact our partners are making in the lives of hundreds of children, youth, women and men in northern Peru. We can say with confidence that your donations to Heart-Links are helping create a more just world.

“We didn’t have anywhere to evacuate to or any means of removing the water.”

When Cyclone Yaku caused flooding across José Leonardo Ortiz, in northern Peru, students and alumni of Centro Santa Angela’s Leadership School took action. In the urban community of José Francisco Cabrera, Walter Cabrera helped organize his neighbours and assess the situation. With nobody else to help them out, they devised an ingenious way of draining away the water.

Walter is a Leadership School alumni and now sits on the school’s citizen watchdog committee COVAG.

Watch the video to learn more.

Erla spoke of the many crises Peruvians have edured recently: COVID19, political upheaval, racism, repression, flooding and now the worst outbreak of dengue in the country’s history. She spoke of the temptation to give in to discouragement and despair.

But Erla also spoke about hope. And about the amazing work Centro Santa Angela’s Leadership School is doing to “weave together” a better future.

Founded in 2014, the Leadership School has developed the leadership skills of scores of Peruvians, women and men, young and old. Graduates across the country exercise leadership that is horizontal, democratic, ethical and commited to human development. They are active and engaged citizens, holding their governments to account.

Heart-Links has been there from the beginning, providing financial support, accompaniment and solidarity.

But don’t take our word for it. Listen for yourself to what Erla has to say about this crucial initiative.

For the first time ever, Heart-Links’ Annual General Meeting will be hybrid.

What does that mean?

It means that we will celebrate with our community IN PERSON for the first time in three years.

When: Sunday, May 28, at 1:30 p.m. EDT
Where: Innovation Works, 201 King Street, London, Ontario

But that’s not all hybrid means.

Can’t make it to the meeting? Don’t live in the London area? You can attend remotely by Zoom! 

What can you expect at this fee-admission event?

• Messages from our Board Chair, Treasurer and Projects Committee
• Introduction to our 2023 Board of Directors
• Presentation of our 2022 Impact Report
• Special guest speaker Erla Hoyos, of Centro Santa Angela (joining us virtually from Peru)

We are very excited to share with you the impacts of the work you supported in Peru last year. And we are thrilled to have Erla Hoyos join us. Erla will fill us in on the current situation in northern Peru and tell us about how Centro Santa Angela’s Leadership School is changing lives there. (Translation will be provided.)

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again and to seeing new faces as well!  

Register for IN-PERSON attendance here.

Register for ZOOM attendance here.

If you questions, email info@heart-links.org or phone 226-884-2845.

Centro Santa Angela has drawn up an action plan to get food and supplies to 200 families in the district. They are also educating their neighbours and the general public about the dangers of water-borne diseases and how to prevent contagion.

Through the Ecological Program supported by Heart-Links, they are helping people in the urban community of San Miguel to pump the water out of overrun drainage system and to access government relief.

Centro Esperanza, also based in José Leonardo Ortiz, is working with rural families affected by the flooding. They held workshops with 200 families from four communities in Illimo to show them how to use moringa seeds to purify the muddy river waters stirred up by the cyclone. These communities have been forced to resort to river water because well water in the region is contiminated with arsenic.

“The families of Coloche and San Isidro were the most affected [by the cyclone], because they were completely cut off, the waters were waist-high,” Centro Esperanza reports. “Now that the waters have receded, we can reach them. The district municipality is ready to work with us to improve the water and on this occasion provided the containers we used to show people how the water cleared up and bacteria was eliminated by the moringa.”

Centro Esperanza also helped community members fill out the very complicated forms they must submit to access emergency support from the government.

Because of strong local organizations like Centro Esperanza and Centro Santa Angela and the commitment and generosity of their leaders, these communities are not alone during this crisis.

Do you want to invest in strong community-based organization in northern Peru? Join our monthly donor family so you can help organizations like Centro Santa Angela and Centro Esperanza all year round.

Centro Santa Angela’s work to “green” urban neighbourhoods in José Leonardo Ortíz has moved to the neglected and underserved pueblo joven of San Miguel, whose public park had barely a single plant growing in it when the project started last year.

Centro Santa Angela runs programs in the neighbourhood for children, youth and adults, to teach them about the importance of protecting our environment as well as what they can do to help. Participants in these programs develop their own environmental initiatives, such as cleaning garbage from their streets, reducing and recycling, planting trees and community gardens or rescuing parks. They also promote good practices among their peers. Thirty families have organized into 9 block committees dedicated to caring for and improving their immediate environment.

As one participant says, “It’s given us the opportunity to learn, to make the authorities aware of us, to form new friendships, improve our relationships and make our community beautiful with parks and gardens so our families have a healthy environment.”

San Miguel’s sucesses have inspired community members next door in San Beatriz—El Palmo to get involved too. Centro Santa Angela will continue to work in San Miguel throughout 2023.

On December 7, hours before what was to be his third impeachment hearing in the short 17 months he has occupied the office, President Pedro Castillo moved to dissolve Congress. He was arrested the same day, and shortly afterward Vice President Dina Bularte assumed his office. She is Peru’s sixth president in six years.

On learning of Castillo’s arrest, thousands of Peruvians took to the streets to protest his ouster. At least seven Castillo supporters have died so far in the violence.

Chronic instability has had and continues to have dire consequences for the Peruvian population. Any action by government is stalled, services are delayed. Much-needed development and reform is postponed indefinately. Civic unrest, which at least initially was concentrated mostly in the South, has disrupted supply lines and increased already high transporation fares. Food is not getting to market.

For our partners in Zaña, Chiclayo and Cajamarca, the current crisis has made already difficult conditions much more difficult. They know that vulnerable populations are always the most hurt. They also see that their programs to foster ethical and democratic leadership, to build resilient sustainable communities and to attend to basic needs, including food, among other initiatives, help people in their communities ride out crises like these and plant the seeds of a better future.

Heart-Links expresses our solidarity with the Peruvian people, who deserve so much better from their representatives in government. We are encouraged by the compassion, integrity and commitment of people like the leaders of Madre Oliva Association, Latidos, ACIES, Rural Libraries, Centro Santa Angela and Centro Esperanza—our partners. Their work offers hope for a better world for Peruvians and inspiration for people everywhere.

When: Thursday, February 10, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM EST

Where: Zoom Webinar (registration link to come)

Special Guests:

• Lola Paredes, of Rural Libraries Network (from Cajamarca)
• Flor Reaño, of Latidos (from the Zaña Valley)
• Erla Hoyos, of Centro Santa Angela (from José Leonardo Ortiz, Chiclayo)

Proceeds from this FREE-ADMISSION virtual event will go to supporting the work of these and our other three Peruvian partner organizations in the coming year.

DO YOU WANT TO HELP SHARE THE LOVE?

There are many ways to get involved.

• Join us on February 10. Visit this EVENT page to register (registration link to come).
• Visit our online silent auction. Auction goes live February 3.
• Donate a silent auction prize. If you have an item or service you’d like to donate, contact info@heart-links.org
• Own a business? Consider sponsoring our event. Contact info@heart-links.org for more information.
• SPREAD THE WORD!

As part of a Ministry-sponsored series called “Community Experiences for Living Well,” Erla shared the school’s aims and its many achievements. “I believe citizen engagement is both a right and an opportunity and that development doesn’t depend on government alone, but on citizens, too,” she says. “That’s why I think it’s increasingly vital for community organizations to add to their training both citizenship and engagement in public affairs.”

Women and men who attend the school span ages from late teens to over 65. “The intergenerational aspect is so important,” says Erla. “Leadership development should be ongoing, it’s lifelong. It needs programs that prepare leaders for the present and the future.”

Students learn about self-esteem, personal development, gender rights, informed voting, government structures, accessing public information, interpreting sources, and monitoring government policy and actions, among other topics.

To put their leadership into action, a final projects asks student leaders to design and carry out initiatives that will benefit their people in their immediate surroundings—whether their home, their neighbourhood or their place of work.

The pandemic brought with new challenges, such as going virtual and adding modules that focused on mental health. But it also presented some opportunities. The school now receives students from well beyond it’s base in José Leonardo Ortiz, for example.

A group from Piura has been particularly active. For their community initiative they are running a program called “Adopt a Tree” to teach people in their community about all the things trees do for us and help them plant and care for a tree of their own.

These are some of the other intiatives students are leading:

• a program to share games and tools to promote literacy and reading among school children at Colegio Fanny Abanto Calle in José Leonardo Ortiz
• an online mutual support group to help people manage stress and care for their mental health
• a series of workshops with college student on how we can reduce our ecological footprint
• organizing a bridage to clean up Pimental beach, just outside Chiclayo

You can watch the program below (Spanish only). Erla’s presentation starts at approximately 4:30 minutes.

“The creativity and compassion that was apparent in our partner’s response to the pandemic has been unbelievable.”
—Gordon Price, co-chair of Heart-Links’ Peru Projects Committee

Heart-Links volunteers, donors, partners and guests connected via Zoom last Sunday for our 2021 annual general meeting, a moving and meaningful hour filled with gratitude and pride but also grief.

There’s no denying 2020 was a very difficult year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused and continues to cause great suffering in Peru. That’s why the work Heart-Links’ partners carry out with your help is so important.

Your donations helped fund 13 projects in Peru totalling just over $99,000:

• 31% on literacy and education
• 23% on leadership
• 19% on gender equality
• 14% on the environment
• 13% on Covid19-specific help

Your support allowed us to continue to fund our partners’ essential ongoing projects, but you went above and beyond this past year, responding to the increased needs the pandemic had caused as well. 

Below, Gordon Price describes how both Heart-Links and our partners responded and adapted despite the immense uncertainty and hardships of the past year. All of us remain committed to improving the lives of people in northern Peru and to building a more just and equitable world.

Throughout June, we will be sharing highlights of last Sunday’s meeting. Next up: words and images from Latidos director, Flor Reaño Segura.