When: Sunday, May 26, from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Where: Innovation Works, 201 King Street, London, Ontario AND by Zoom (link to come).

Learn about the impact your donations made in 2023. Help us celebrate another year of working together to create a more just world.

We have invited our partners to join the celebration, too. Virtually from Peru!

What can you expect at this fee-admission event?

• Messages from our Board Chair, Treasurer and Projects Committee
• Introduction to our 2024 Board of Directors
• Presentation of our 2023 Impact Report
• Good company, refreshments and a door prize!

We hope to see you there!

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!

Here are just some of the ways Flor and her team of volunteers have helped—and continue to help—the people of the Zaña Valley during the pandemic:

• Delivery of food aid and school supplies to families in need
• Virtual mental wellness workshops
• Nutritious breakfast delivery in 4 communities
• Workshops for women in sustainable farming methods
• Helping rural women access markets for their vegetables
• Promotion and training in starting home food gardens
• A monthly open-air classroom for homework support
• Storytelling contests using home videos and posting to Facebook
• A decima-composing contest to commemorate International Women’s Day
• Training for Latidos volunteers to help them adapt to the new circumstances
• Door-to-door wellness checks
• Vaccination campaigns

This is what people in the Zaña Valley are saying about Latidos:

I’m very grateful for the support given my daughter. She had no idea how to submit her homework using the telephone. Her emotional state has changed because of you.
—mother of Yasumi Goicochea

I’m so happy about the support you’ve given my daughter. She loves to participate in new things and to take part in the reading contests.
—mother of Dulce Anais Gallardo

I never thought the COVID-19 pandemic would help us to learn more than we had ever imagined. We’re not only teaching and helping the children and families but also ourselves. All of this helps us in our careers as early education teachers. Thank you for eveything.
—Latidos volunteer María Elena Chávez Urcia

Want to learn more about how your donations are helping Flor and her team help women and children in the Zaña Valley? Join us for our AGM and hear from Flor herself about the challenges of 2020 and the year ahead.

When: March 31 at 11:00 a.m. EDT (10:00 a.m. in Peru)

Where: Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89381373646?pwd=MzFmQ2pSakY2N0JES0lkWHh0YlBNZz09

Rural Libraries invites you to make your own offering, in whatever part of the world you live in, “to the earth, to our deceased, and our sacred mountains.” They explain:

“The All’pata paguikun is a very ancient ceremony to render our affection to the earth, to the apus or sacred mountains and to our deceased. And it comes from always, when there were no churches or doctrines here. So your Celebration does not mean renouncing the creed that each person has but, on the contrary, it enriches it. It is foolish to qualify this ceremony as idolatry. And furthermore, as an elder named Gandhi said, ‘By practicing tolerance for other beliefs, we acquire a more real understanding of our own.’”

Learn more about All’pata paguikun here (English) or here (Spanish).

Founded in 1971 by Father John Medcalf, today the Rural Libraries Network comprises a web of more than 500 tiny libraries housed in the homes of dedicated volunteer librarians throughout the mountains surrounding Cajamarca and neighbouring provinces in northern Peru. Librarians both house the reading materials and take leadership in establishing reading circles for young and old to promote literacy, education and pride in the Indigenous campesino culture. More than 50,000 rural readers have enjoyed the books Rural Libraries has published.

Heart-Links has partnered with the network since our own founding 26 years ago. In 2006, our donors funded publication of the first Enciclopedia Campesina, and we are currently funding a new revised edition. The Enciclopedia Campesina is a collection of 20 volumes that gathers stories and knowledge from across the region of Cajamarca. It is the cornerstone of the Rural Library Network’s literacy program. The revised edition will add stories and knowledge from communities who have joined the Network in the intervening years.

nada nos separa si la tierra nos junta
nothing can separate us if the earth unites us

Erla belongs to the leadership team at Centro Santa Angela and she runs the José Leonardo Ortiz Leadership School, a project funded by Heart-Links donors.

Register here for Women in the Lead: A Tapestry of Stories from the Global South.

“The fact that we are women means that we are impacted differently in any crisis,” Erla says. In the case of the pandemic, “isolation is multiplying the workload for women.” With everybody home, and children out of school, women and girls find they are expected to keep house, take care of all family members and keep up with other responsibilities, such as school work.

Women and girls are also at greater risk of sexual violence. “The cases of violence have not stopped with the pandemic, with the lockdown,” Erla says. “On the contrary, they have become more prominent. Cases of abuse, of teenage pregnancies, are more evident.” Sexual violence, according to Erla, is itself a pandemic. “We say it is a big monster that really needs many efforts, many doors of entry to be able to contribute to diminish this problem in girls, in women.”

To take this discussion further and exchange views with women in other parts of the world, Erla will join Elida Jeanty, Officer of Development of Rayjon Share Care, and Basimenye Nhlema, Community Health Director for Partners in Health, for Women in the Lead: A Tapestry of Stories from the Global South.

You can join the conversation, too, by registering now. What better way to get ready for International Women’s Day on March 8?

This “fireside chat” organized by the Ontario Council for International Cooperation and hosted by podcaster Safa Shahkhalili, forms part of Tapestry 2030, an eight-part illustration and podcast series on the partnerships needed for gender-transformative and sustainable development. Amanda Schutz illustrated the series.

You can listen to Heart-Links’ episode Leadership Action in Peru, featuring Erla and two of the Leadership School participants, right here.

Women in the Lead: A Tapestry of Stories from the Global South takes place by Zoom on Friday, March 5 at 8 a.m. EST.

But the plan was not just to rebuild. Centro Esperanza and the families of San Isidro wanted to rebuild in a way that would make their community more resilient, protect the environment, ensure women participated equally as community leaders and improve living standards.

Through a project funded by Heart-Links donors, the community succeeded in rehabilitating its well, ensuring access to drinking water and enabling irrigation. They also secured equipment for producing animal feed
from agricultural waste in preparation for the guinea pig cooperative they hoped to start.

Even after the first wave of COVID-19 hit, they were able to plant basic food crops and share them with neighbours in need. However, with markets closed and all movement prohibited, with no such thing as unemployment insurance and only meagre governments supports that took months to arrive, the situation grew desperate.

Aware of these conditions, Heart-Links told Centro Esperanza to feel free to divert project funds to meet these new and changing needs. We asked them to make whatever modifications were necessary to best help people in need. A generous donation by the Urusline Sisters of Chatham meant we could also send additional emergency aid to San Isidro.

Today, the pandemic is far from over. In fact, Peru is just entering its second wave now. But the people of San Isidro have not given up on their dream to build a resilient, sustainable, healthy community.

They have modified their animal husbandry initiative, deciding to raise chickens instead. In 2021, the families aim to develop an organic chicken hatchery that will produce eggs and meat for themselves and the market. In solidarity with impoverished families who do not belong to their association, each family will donate 5 chicks to families in need.

Participation by women in leadership positions will continue to be a focus. And Centro Esperanza will provide workshops in community organization, gender rights, marketing, cost analysis, strategic alliances, and business planning.

Solidarity helped get this community through the first wave of COVID-19, and solidarity—shown by Canadians and by our Peruvian partners but also by the families of San Isidro who share with each other and with their neighbours—will help them get through the next wave.

Would you like to learn more about the work Heart-Links supports in San Isidro? Join us at Share the Love @ Home and meet Felicita Ramírez, a member of Centro Esperanza’s leadership team, who will tell us more about her organization and the people they work with.

REGISTER HERE

• No poverty
• Zero Hunger
• Good Health and Well-being
• Quality Education
• Gender Equality
• Sustainable Cities and Communities
• Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

To celebrate, Heart-Links is taking part in a host of #IDW2021 activities, and starting today, you can, too! Here’s what’s on our calendar:

SUNDAY

Bidding is open now at our Share the Love @ Home online silent auction. Win spectacular prizes and support Heart-Links projects in Peru. It’s a win-win. Auction closes end of day Friday.
START BIDDING HERE

If you speak Spanish, tune in at 4 p.m. today to Radio Western’s La Voz Hispana (94.9FM) to hear Heart-Links chat with guest host José Merino about why international cooperation is important.

MONDAY

The Ontario Council of International Cooperation’s multimedia storytelling initiative Tapestry 2030 launches in the wee hours Monday morning. First up in this series focused on the future of international cooperation and global solidarity is Bhutan Canada Foundation and a conversation about Building Sustainable Tourism in Bhutan. Subscribe to the series here or here or anywhere else you listen to podcasts so you can also catch Heart-Links’ episode when it airs later this week.

If you want to learn more about the series and the multimedia artists and organizations involved, join us and other OCIC members at 12 noon for a lunchtime launch event.
LEARN MORE AND REGISTER HERE

THURSDAY

Listen to Tapestry 2030 to hear Heart-Links chat with Erla Hoyos, of Centro Santa Angela, about Leadership in Action in Peru. The episode airs at midnight here and here and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. (Don’t forget to subscribe so you can hear two episodes a week all the way to International Women’s Day.)

FRIDAY

It’s finally here! Share the Love @ Home starts on zoom webinar at 7 p.m. sharp.
REGISTER FREE HERE

For the first time ever, our partners in Peru will join us for our annual free-admission fiesta: Delicia Romero and Cecilia Odar, of Madre Oliva Association will speak to us from Zaña; Isabel Gutiérrez, of ACIES, will join from Cajamarca, and Fely Ramírez from Centro Esperanza in Chiclayo will take part, too. All four women will speak about the difficult year just past and the needs their organizations hope to address in 2021 as Peru faces the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Live from Zaña, Yim Rodríguez will enchant with Afro-Peruvian music from the region. Both musician and visual artist, Yim is best known in London for painting the mural that graces King’s University library.

This is also the last day for bidding in our online silent auction. Get those bids in—or make a donation. We can get involved and help make this a more just world. Our silent auction closes when the clock strikes 12.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT WEEK,
FROM HEART-LINKS TO YOU!

At the end of a very hard 2020, our partner ACIES spread their message of hope and solidarity not only within the Indigenous communities where they work but all the way to Canada.

They sent us holiday greetings from Pomabamba and ushered in the new year with greetings from Quiritimayo. We would like to share those greetings with you.

ACIES offers Indigenous children and adults programs that help improve their quality of life and their levels of education through personal and community development. ACIES runs the Alternative Campesino School in the rural community of Pomobamba and an afterschool program of alternative education in the urban neighbourhood of Quiritimayo. Members of ACIES are volunteers—students and professionals—from a range of disciplines.

Would you like to learn more about ACIES and the work Heart-Links supports in Cajamarca? Join us at Share the Love @ Home and meet ACIES director Isabel Gutiérrez, who will tell us more about her organization and the people they work with.

REGISTER HERE

Here’s a taste:

With the help of podcaster Safa Shahkhalili and illustrator Amanda Schutz, the series will share stories from Heart-Links and 7 other OCIC members—Bhutan Canada Foundation, CAP Network, Canada-Mathare Education Trust, Inter Pares, Partners In Health Canada, Rayjon Share Care, YMCA of Greater Toronto—and our respective international partners.

A lunchtime launch event at 12 noon, Monday, February 8, kicks off the series. Join us through zoom to

• Reflect on the importance of International Development Week, and why a partnership approach matters
• Hear from podcaster Safa Shahkhalili about her approach to creating the series and engaging with partners around the world
• Hear from illustrator Amanda Schutz about her artwork and artistic process
• Engage with participants about what’s at the heart of their podcast stories

REGISTER FOR THE TAPESTRY 2030 LAUNCH HERE

Two new episodes of Tapestry 2030 air each week. Heart-Links’ episode airs Thursday, February 11, just one day before our own celebration of solidarity, Share the Love @ Home.

Here’s to celebrating International Development Week with you!

Share the Love @ Home will take place online on Friday, February 12 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
REGISTER HERE

This is a FREE-ADMISSION event.

Join us for a visual and musical introduction to the communities Heart-Links works with in northern Peru. Hear straight from our partner organizations Madre Oliva Association, ACIES and Centro Esperanza about the locally driven development projects Heart-Links supports in their communities (simultaneous interpretation will be provided). Learn how you can help, too. To round out the evening, the multitalented Yim Rodríguez will enchant with Afro-Peruvian music performed live from Zaña.

To help us raise the funds needed to keep the projects in Peru going, don’t forget to visit our online silent auction. From Februrary 7 to 12 you can bid on a host of exciting prizes, ranging from gift certificates for Venezuelan eatery Arepa Ink, to an oil change and detailing by Finch Automotive to select fashions by local designer Carmina de Young. 

Heart-Links is very grateful to the many local businesses that have shown their commitment to community by donating auction prizes.

Access the silent auction from our event page starting February 7.

Travel to Peru may not be possible for the rest of 2021. But Share the Love @ Home is the next best thing to being there.

Don’t miss out!

Share the Love @ Home is just one of the initiatives Heart-Links has planned for International Development Week (Feb. 7–13). Stay tuned for more exciting ways you can celebrate global solidarity with us.