The project Heart-Links’ donors funded provided laying hens and incubators, as well as training, to help community members feed themselves and their families. It also helped them organize and learn how to work together—women and men—to build a better, sustainable future.

María and other women saw changes in their relationships with their husbands and their positions in the community. “Some men are also learning the chores that we women do in the home,” María told us. “And well, for me and my family, my husband has also joined in raising animals. Because before, they thought that men only went out to work and we took care of the house and the animals. Not anymore.”

Today in San Isidro, ECODAE members raise chicken and sheep, and grow vegetables, passion fruit and papayas. They no longer need funding from Heart-Links to keep moving forward.

And María? She is now president of ECODAE.

Heart-Links has started helping another community in the region reach their dreams.

That was something María wanted, too. “We also want other women to learn what we’ve learned from the project—to improve their knowledge of raising small animals and to participate in decision-making at home and in the community,” she told us. “That they understand that women should be respected and valued. That household chores, raising animals and farmwork should be recognized and valued as work we women do that contributes to the household.”

Thank you for the support you gave María when she needed it. Investing in women like María is one way Heart-Links, with your help, is creating a more just world.

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.

There was, however, the fragile beginning of a community association. Community members had formed this organization after the floods of 2017 drove them from their homes. Even back then, they knew that the only way to recover from the catasptrophe and get ahead was by working together.

To see this same community today in the video below—the very same people we met back in 2019—is truly heart-warming. See (and hear) for yourself what life in San Isidro is like today. Learn what this generous and determined community has accomplished and how our partner Centro Esperanza helped them get there. As a Heart-Links supporter, you, too, helped make this happen. So thank you!

Video titles read as follows:

• Centro Esperanza, Chiclayo, with support from Heart-Links, Canada, has since 2019 carried out the project “Promoting the Development of Rural Families, Victims of El Niño, in San Isidro, Illimo.”
• During 3 years, they received training in organic farming and raising small animal and now they are moving ahead communally.
• 23 families were affected by the rains but through this project, they were able to recover, and today they are members of the association Community Enterprise for Sustainable Development (ECODAE).
• They learned to make organic fertilizers and bioinsecticides and to prevent disease in their animals. Now they are growing organic passion fruit and papaya as well as raising organic chickens and pelibüey sheep.
• As part of the project, they received workshops about social skills, the roles assigned to men and women, marketing strategies, and other topics.

The families of the rural community of San Isidro have come a long way since 2017, when they fled their homes because of floods that damaged or destroyed their houses, lands, crops, animals, irrigation system, and water supply. Today, with support from Heart-Links partner Centro Esperanza, they grow and sell organic vegetables, raise free-run chickens and produce organic eggs for themselves and the market, raise sheep and have planted an orchard that will produce passion fruit and papaya for market.

But it hasn’t been easy. In 2022, fertilizer, food and transportation prices skyrocketed, making it harder than ever to buy food or travel for work. Late in the year, countrywide protests interrupted supply chains, further undermining food security. Despite these challenges, the families of San Isidro made great strides:

• The community received a donation of sheep from another institution which was impressed by the success of the project sponsored by Heart-Links.
• A focus in 2022 was to get youth involved. Community youth learned about organic gardening, caring for sheep, communications and gender equality.
• The community successfully negotiated with municipal authorities for a place in town to sell their produce.
• They also arranged with the nearby Túcume Museum to sell their organic produce on a monthly basis at the site.
• A woman was elected president of San Isidro’s community association.
• One family both produces and sells organic fertilizer.
• The families used some of their earnings to donate educational games to the local school. They wanted to show solidarity as well as the importance of play in learning.
• More community members want to join the association.
• Inspired by San Isidro, a neighbouring community wants to start a similar project.

And there is so much more. But sometimes pictures tell the story better. These photos represent the first six months of this project in 2022:

This season the focus is on “localization,” an approach to international cooperation that seeks to put greater control and direction in the hands of the people on the ground where development projects like the ones Heart-Links supports take place.

For Heart-Links’ episode, which will go to air in late May, we will sit down with Vitalina Flores and Ana Mio, of Centro Esperanza, and two representatives of San Isidro, to talk about how localization has been key to that community’s successes. With support from Centro Esperanza and Heart-Links, this community of rural farm workers has recovered from floods in 2017, navigated and survived the pandemic, incorporated sustainable farming methods and developed a community chicken hatchery.

Other organizations participating in Tapestry 2030 Season 2 are OCIC, the Primate’s World Development and Relief Fund, Rayjon Share Care of Sarnia and Cultural Seeds.

You can learn more about what to expect from this season by joining our virtual launch event this Thursday, March 24, at 9 a.m. (ET). Hear directly from participating organizations and our local partners as we talk about our episodes, localization and storytelling. We hope to see you there!

(Spanish-English interpretation will be provided.)

Our donors responded, and today María and her community are on their way to a thriving and sustainable business. Thanks to our donors, each family now has, on average, four laying hens and 21 chicks. They’ve even received an offer to buy 210 of their laying hens when they are ready to go to market.

There have been challenges: Power fluctuations (two communities share one power line) meant not all the eggs from the first round of incubation hatched. To improve outcomes, María took the lead in negotiating an independent power supply for their community with the municipality. She also invited the mayor to visit the new hatchery and he was so impressed, he waved the registration fee for installing a new power line.

Another challenge was the distance many community members had to walk in order to tend to their chicks, coralled at a central location, after they’d hatched. The solution was to house the chicks in smaller enclosures—one for every two houses—and keep them warm using biogas community members make themselves from manure.

To prevent disease Centro Esperanza, who runs the project, has enlisted a veterinary student to help community members vaccinate the chicks and teach them about appropriate nutrition at different stages of development and the importance of keeping the chicks’ pens clean.

San Idisro’s children are learning too.

Like María, many women in the community are eager to participate and learn more. They’ve asked Centro Esperanza to add public speaking to the workshops they will take so they can make their voices heard, in the community and beyond.

For these women and for María, your support has helped change their world.

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!

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.

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

Communities are struggling to meet current emergency needs and at the same time prepare for life after lockdown.

In San Isidro, a rural community still recovering from the 2017 floods that washed away homes, crops, tools and the community well, people have learned that their best defence against threats like COVID-19 is to pool their resources and skills and plan their future together.

With funds provided by Heart-Links’ donors, our partner Centro Esperanza has worked with the community over the last year to establish a community association, develop sustainable farming practices, ensure a water supply for consumption and irrigation and defend community members’ rights under Peruvian law.

“I’ve always said that if we organize, we can achieve our goals,” says association president José Santamaría. “Now people are beginning to participate more. They see we are serious. They see the benefits. It’s the only way we’ll move forward.”

With the onset of COVID-19 and disruptions in agriculture and commerce, the association has been forced to redirect some of those project funds to purchasing food for community members. Some, but not all. They decided to put aside monies earmarked for their guinea pig business until COVID-19 has passed. “They asked us to reserve it because it’s the only thing they’ll have to be able to survive afterward,” said project coordinator Ana Mio.

COVID-19 has spread to the countryside, where health care services are inadequate and water is scarce. In a community near San Isidro, seven people have died recently in quick succession. Centro Esperanza is sharing with community leaders guidelines about social distancing and hygiene. And they are working with them to access government emergency benefits.

In the coming months, Heart-Links hopes to reinforce the efforts of families in San Isidro “to move forward.” We, too, want to ensure community members are able to meet their needs now and in the future. Your donations will help the people of San Isidro reach their goals.