News

Hola To All,

Happy New Year and welcome to our fourth update, the first in 2006! We started the New Year off with great success--must have been the lentils Alison threw over her shoulder! We have secured a new location for the New Andean School for English, we have 100+ children enrolled in the Andean School, we have been working on a water reclamation project at the Aldea del Rosario, we have a new Orphanage program called the Aldea Franseca Mayer, and we had a total of nine other volunteers here at Tinkuy Peru during the month of January. We have been extremely busy and are excited that our work here is starting to show progress.

“Artistas Plasticos” our new Community Partner:

In January, our director Leonico Tinoco was elected to serve as the President of a local organization called “Artistas Plasticos”. The organization’s mission is to support local Peruvian artists through education and help organize gallery expositions. Many artisans in Peru are poor, under recognized and in need of community support. We hope to provide them with meeting space in our new location and have members teach community art classes. The future may also hold the opportunity for an exhibition in our new space. We are proud to have the “Artistas Plasticos” as our partner in the community.

The New Andean School for English:

Our second semester started on January 9 after a three week break to make improvements to the program, and to promote the school to raise awareness and enrollment. We accompanied our director Tino to a local radio station, 1550 AM, to have an interview on a very popular morning talk show here in Huancayo. After three early morning attempts to get our interview (the custom is to stand outside the station waiting), we were invited in and tried our best to answer (very fast) questions in Spanish. The very same morning, the phone was ringing wild, and we had people lined up out of our house signing up for classes, which continued for the two days following. We ended up with well over 100 students and were able to create thirteen different classes. Our website is also finished; you can check it out at www.andeanschool.com

For the first time in our program’s history, we are able to have orphans leave the orphanage and come to classes at the New Andean School. Every day, Terry walks 40 minutes to and from the orphanage with twelve of the kids who want to come to our free English classes. This is a much better option for these kids, who have a chance to leave the confines of the orphanage. They seem more encouraged to learn in the school, compared to the informal community room we taught in at the orphanage. We are pleased to have these wonderful children in our school.

We have secured a new location for the school, which is much larger, more, in a more visible location and holds a lot of potential for growth of the program. The new location in on the third floor of a commercial building, contains six class rooms, a space for a future computer lab, a small theater where we envision a youth drama program, space for a volunteer resource center, two large bathrooms, and a café for snacks. We have decided to fund much of the renovation of this space ourselves as our program is growing, providing more support for the poor in the community. The new space will open February 1, 2006, and we will have many more details in next months update!

The Aldea del Rosario Infintil Orphanage:

January was a good month for our little friends at the Aldea del Rosario Orphanage. We started the English School program with the orphans at the Andean School. We are also coordinating with two other volunteer programs in Huancayo who are working at the Aldea to teach arts and crafts, read stories in English, and play games and sports with the younger kids. We have also made a great deal of progress in our collaboration with the staff at the Aldea. We meet with the director with much more frequency to discuss the direction of our work and how we can better help their situation.

Alison has started baking demonstations in the Aldea ‘Patisserie’ or bakery. Every Wednesday morning we round all of the “tías” or caretakers, for a demonstration of the recipe of a new baked good from around the world. The first project was banana bread, a good place to start given the prevalence of bananas in Peru! The class has been a success in the Aldea and we are happy to be improving the lives of our children here through Alison’s creative skills in the kitchen.

The largest project we have been working on at the Aldea del Rosario, is a water reclamation project, started by our friends, and former volunteers, Anders and Inger, in December. The orphanage currently has no running water during the day and very little at night. Toilets do not flush, bathing must done outside out of buckets and it is very difficult to wash clothing. Obviously, this problem has had a negative effect on the hygiene and sanitation of the kids. Terry has been working closely with the director of the Aldea in order to work out all of the details of construction and funding. Currently we are almost $1,000 short of our construction budget, a large portion of which we have offered to fund. We are looking for the difference from outside sources, please contact us if you think you can help. We also have diagrams and models of what we are doing (don’t we always) Please click here to view our plan for this project.

The Aldea del Franseca Mayer Orphanage:

We are pleased to announce that we have a new orphanage aphiliate. The Franseca Mayer Orphanage is a facility that shelters young women from the small villages that surround Huancayo. Currently, there are thirty young girls who live in this orphanage, three of which are young mothers under the age of 16. The Aldea is located in the outskirts of Huancayo, where they live in poorly constructed building that has many holes in the walls and roof, leading to bug infestation and freezing cold nights. Along with our daily programming teaching arts and crafts, dancing and English, our volunteers cut and styled hair when they had problems with lice and we have personally funded a fumigation of the entire facility to minimize insect problems. We are working to make improvements to their building as well as provide diapers for the babies who live here. Our developing program for diapers is called “Pampers for Peru” and is being coordinated by one of our volunteers Erin Mitchell. Please contact us or Erin (erin_ot@canada.com) if you think you can help.

Thank you to everyone who sent holiday packages with gifts for the orphans , especially Tom Varney and Linda Martin, Bob and Judy McCall and Trish McCormick. We have special (after Christmas) plans for all of the gifts and will be handing them out at both orphanages in February !!!

Tinkuy Peru:

January was our biggest and most eventful month yet for the Tinkuy Peru volunteer program. We had nine other volunteers in the house helping us work in many ways for the community. We had folks from United States, Canada, Ireland and Scotland. Our role as volunteer supporters took on a new meaning this month with so many people. It was a great feeling for us to be apart of a large group all working for the same goal. We also received more applications in January for new volunteers than we have in months past. We have started redesigning the Tinkuy Peru website and hope to launch it in February. Terry and Tino have put together all of the documentation to apply for N.G.O. status in Peru and hope to be granted this status in February as well. We added many goals and activities to Tinkuy Peru including working with young mothers, working with special needs children, and working with senior citizens. We look forward to seeing these activities grow.