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.

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 goal? To enlist men and boys in the struggle to end violence against women by promoting concepts of masculinity that embrace relationships of equality and respect.

“We start by recognizing that in the matter of gender-based violence, the ones who suffer most from it are women, and the people who perpetrate this violence are mostly men,” says project coordinator Anthony Peña Flores. In the interview, Anthony describes how one young man overcame homophobic misconceptions and learned that its’ okay, even good for you, to show emotion and tenderness to other men.

Topics addressed in the masculinities workshops include the social and cultural roots of machismo, what gender-base violence is and how to eradicate it from personal relationships, fatherhood, sexuality and managing emotions, and violence against women in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marleny Constantino Lucumí, who coordinates programs to end gender-based violence at Centro Santa Angela, acknowledged that achieving gender equality is an uphill battle. The empowerment of women is also key. “It’s difficult, but not impossible,” she say. “It’s a matter of advancing little by little so that women come to understand their rights . . . and how to defend them.”

Heart-Links board director Sara Alva Lizarraga agrees that the kind of changes Heart-Links projects support do not happen overnight. Yet the projects Heart-Links finances with the donations we receive often lead to larger changes down the road. “It’s great for us to see how this seed we have supplied begins to grow and to generate programs that become self-sustaining,” she says.

You can watch the whole interview below. Follow the instructions to add English subtitles.

If you’d like to watch more news from Correo Canadiense, subscribe to their YouTube channel here.

Heart-Links is grateful to the Cambia Development Foundation for their financial support of the Men for Gender Equality project.

At Heart-Links we are ready to support our partner organizations in Peru as they design flexible, responsive programs to help the people most in need in their communities through this next phase of the pandemic.

Your support in 2020 made this possible.

Thanks to you, community leaders in José Leonardo Ortiz are engaging their neighbours in civic action and in improving living standards in their community.

Thanks to you, rural families in San Isidro are developing an ecologically sustainable chicken hatchery—a project that will not only provide sorely needed income but will also make this community more resilient.

Thanks to you, adults and children with developmental disabilities in Nuevo Mocupe are getting medical attention and life skills counselling that will help them take part as full members of their community.

In all, Heart-Links financed 11 longer-term and emergency projects in northern Peru in 2020. Hundreds of individuals, their families and their communities benefitted—thanks to you.

Over 145 individuals and organizations donated a total of $101,000 to Heart-Links to make these projects happen. You can see many of our donors’ names here.

We are grateful to each of you for your passion and your support of the work we do. And we want you to know that our joint commitment to build a more just world will continue well into the future.

Heart-Links’ new 2020–2025 Strategic Plan lays out our goals and the steps we will take to ensure Canada-Peru solidarity stays strong. You can read it by clicking through the slides below. With you, despite the pandemic, we will move forward.

Erla Hoyos, of Centro Santa Angela, and Ruth Taylor, of Heart-Links, speak with Safa Shahkhalili about the Canadian-Peruvian partnership that is fostering a new kind of leadership in Peru. All accompanied by beautiful illustration by Amanda Schutz.

You can listen right here:

Or you can listen on Spotify (here) or Apple Podcasts (here) or wherever you like to listen to podcasts: Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Deezer, Listen Notes,  Pocket Casts, Castro, Castbox.

Remember to follow or subscribe to listen to all the episodes in the series. You’ll hear stories from Bhutan Canada Foundation, CAP Network, Canada-Mathare Education Trust, Inter Pares, Partners In Health Canada, Rayjon Share Care, YMCA of Greater Toronto and their respective international partners.

Here are some ways you can help keep this important conversation about how to build a more just world going:

• share this blog post on social media and with friends and family
• rate each podcast episode you listen to
• share your feedback, questions and comments (you can email them to info@heart-links.org)

Tapestry 2030 is a podcast and illustration series focused on the future of international cooperation and global solidarity, and the partnerships needed for gender transformative, sustainable development. In it OCIC members and their international partners share stories anchored in the principles for Just Recovery within the context of the global pandemic.

If you’d like to hear more from our outstanding partners about the projects Heart-Links supports in northern Peru, join us at 7 p.m. EST tomorrow at Share the Love @ Home. Register for free here.

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.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), overreliance on a few select industries has made Peru’s economy particularly vulnerable. The organization predicts that by the end of 2020, as many as 1.5 million people will have lost their jobs. Wages have fallen too—by 10% in the capital, for instance.

Government measures to offset income loss during the pandemic, such as a monthly family bonus of S/760 (CAD340) and food baskets, reach only a fraction of families in need.

In the impoverished district of José Leonardo Ortiz, Heart-Links’ partner Centro Santa Angela is helping families get through the pandemic.

Participants of Centro Santa Angela’s Leadership School—a project financed by Heart-Links donors—have forged a new partnership with the Peruvian branch of Aldeas Infantiles SOS to bring food and supplies to families in the marginal settlements María Cruz and Fundo El Abuelo.

Community members also form part of the partnership. They shared their knowledge of the neighbourhood with Centro Santa Angela’s young leaders and told them what would make it a better place to live: electricity, running water, sewers, paved roads, green spaces, garbage pickup, schools.

Centro Santa Angela will continue to work with María Cruz and Fundo El Abuelo to achieve their goals. And Heart-Links’ will continue to support Centro Santa Angela’s efforts to generate lasting change in these hard-hit communities.

The long lockdown has been devastating for many family incomes. In José Leonardo Ortiz, an impoverished urban district on the outskirts of Chiclayo, Centro Santa Angela is helping meet the needs of families who have not received government aid and have not been able to work during quarantine. Most of these families are headed by single mothers.

Centro Santa Angela has delivered food baskets, masks and cleaning supplies to 175 families in the district. “A huge thank you for thinking about our needs,” said one recipient. “Since the pandemic began, none of us have been able to bring daily sustenance to our homes. But somehow this whole situation has united us in mutual support of those who have the least.”

This emergency project was funded from a generous donation by the Ursuline Sisters of Chatham. Local businesses also chipped in by donating or discounting products so Centro Santa Angela could reach more families than originally planned. Centro Santa Angela’s ecological program and its Leadership School, both financed by Heart-Links’ donors, made sure the food baskets got to the families most in need.

“It’s a gesture that shows what we are made of,” writes Zoila Burgos, of Centro Santa Angela. “Giving to those in need fills both the giver and the receiver with joy.” For Zoila, giving is at the heart of solidarity because it brings people closer together and humanizes us in each other’s eyes.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Peru have surged past 350,000, and more than 17,000 people have died. Peru currently ranks 6th worldwide for the number of people infected.

As Peru enters its third month of quarantine, Heart-Links’ partners continue to work to stop the disease’s spread and to keep the people in their communities safe and healthy.

In José Leonardo Ortiz, in Lambayeque province, Centro Santa Angela is encouraging children in their ecological program to become citizen reporters. From their homes, boys and girls are delivering public service messages to their friends and neighbours by video and home-made posters placed in their windows for passersby to see.

What are the messages children are delivering? Stay at home. Continue to reduce, reuse and recycle. Dispose properly of tissues and other waste that could be infected with COVID-19. Spread love.

As of May 31, Peru reports 164,476 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Authorities have extended the quarantine to the end of June, although some industries will be allowed to resume operations. Lambayeque province, which includes José Leondardo Ortiz, continues to be one of the hardest hit regions, but there are signs of hope. On May 29, Lambayeque for the first time saw a decrease in the daily number of fatalities.

José Leonardo Ortiz reports 1,000 cases and 85 deaths.