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.

For the last several years, Madre Oliva Association has worked closely with vulnerable families in the rural hamlet of Nuevo Mocupe, just outside Zaña.

They have attended to the needs of children and adults with developmental disabilities and others who are finding it increasingly difficult to feed themselves and their families because of rising prices.

In the wake of COVID-19, Madre Oliva Association also started an afterschool program for children to help address the educational and nutritional gaps exacerbated by two years of school closures and limits on travel (which reduced employment opportunities).

Six days a week, they provide 35 children with reinforcement in reading, numeracy, art and social skills as well as a nutritional snack. Therapists offer workshops every two months to the children’s parents on topics such as mental health, how to detect learning disabilities, COVID-19, and parent-child relationships.

That was the sentiment expressed by one of our partners during Heart-Links’ recent and first-ever Solidarity Trip Reunion. Last Saturday, alumni of our Solidarity and Work/Awareness Trips connected by zoom with some of the people they’d met during those visits to share memories of their time together and what it meant to each of them.

We also talked about our lives today and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in our communities.

Friends from our partner organizations in Zaña, Chiclayo and Cajamarca spoke about their memories of sharing their work and their daily lives with visitors from Canada, noting that such exchanges have strengthened their organizations and enriched their work. Delicia Romero recalled that she has never missed a single one, from the very first visits led by Sister Janet Zadorsky in the 1990s to the 2018 Solidarity Trip—the last before the pandemic hit.

Zaña artist Dimas Gil also dropped by to say hello, as did Lucho and Cristina and family, tuning in from the hostel where trip participants often stay.

For the Canadian visitors, the trips have also had a profound impact. Whether working in a community kitchen, helping to build a community-designed playground or climbing a sacred mountain in Cajamarca, trip participants said they learned as much about themselves and their communities in Canada as they did about the people and places they visited.

Several participants said they were awakened to “the power of community,” a lesson that led them to greater community involvement on their return home. Susan Price, a librarian herself, was especially impressed by the work of the Rural Libraries Network. “They’re exactly what libraries should be,” she said. For other participants, the trip informed or inspired their career choices.

Concern about the ravages caused in Peru by the pandemic was top of mind. One of our partners is currently recovering from the illness. Another had to miss the reunion because she was busy trying to buy oxygen for sick relatives and to get a friend into the overcrowded ICU. In Cajamarca, the virus has now spread to the remote mountain villages. The hardship and pain the pandemic is causing our partners, their families and friends and their communities was clear.

But the affection among these old acquaintances and the joy of jointly revisiting significant moments in their lives was also palpable. It’s one reason Heart-Links is finding ways like this so we can listen to and learn from each other and express our solidarity even when in-person visits are not possible.

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.

By the end of the year, Madre Oliva Association reported substantial progress. The school-aged children were in school and family incomes had increased. Significantly, the follow-up project the Association submitted to Heart-Links for consideration did not include supplying food.

Then COVID-19 hit. Lockdown orders prevented many families in Peru from going out to make a living. The Peruvian government offered aid but it did not always reach the most in need.

Each of Heart-Links’ partners had to devise new ways of working with the communities they served. This meant adapting projects already underway to the new reality or developing completely new initiatives.

In Nuevo Mocupe, the families who had been working with Madre Oliva Association turned to each other for support. They practiced the same kindness and solidarity the members of Madre Oliva Association had shown them.

“Ms. María, who has stronger organizational skills than some of the others, managed to register to receive government benefits,” says Association president Delicia Romero. “When she received her food basket, she shared it with the other families.”

Madre Oliva Association, themselves under lockdown, decided to focus their efforts on helping these families through the crisis. They submitted a new project proposal to Heart-Links that would continue the work of last year but add actions made necessary by the pandemic. These include supplying basic foods, masks and cleaning supplies, providing guidance in health and safety during COVID-19, and helping the families access government aid.

Heart-Links is proud to fund this new project.

In fact, we’ve been so impressed by the way all our partners have responded to this crisis—with creativity, perseverance and heart. We are honoured to be able to partner with such committed and caring people.

And we are grateful to all the people and organizations here in Canada who have donated to Heart-Links so that this work of building a more just world continues.