Thursday, November 7, 2013

October 2013 MySmallHelp Peru Newsletter


Welcome to the October 2013 MySmallHelp Peru newsletter
I would like to sincerely apologise for the lack of news on the MSH Peru projects over the past 14 months. I at least have a few good excuses! I experienced a near death car accident in April in Lima and gave birth to beautiful healthy Helena Inkary on June 7th this year. I have been on semi maternity leave since June but am now back to work and have an extra little helper to accompany me each day!

Our volunteer coordinator Mayra Vargas Cardich continues to run the show in Ollantaytambo looking after our volunteers and working with the schools, municipality and individual families that MSH support with your help.

We are sending out this newsletter to give you an update on the work that MSH Peru is doing and to say a big thank you to everyone involved for their continued support. It is impossible to mention here all of the donors and volunteers that have touched the lives of the children and families that we are supporting over the past 14 months so we will not mention any names but you know who you are!

Here is proof that your small help really DOES make a BIG difference….

Leander Hollings
Director
MySmallHelp Peru
26.10.2013




CHRISTMAS 2012

During the Christmas period 2012, MySmallHelp held a drawing competition with the children in Nepal and Peru and with sales of the Christmas cards funded presents, hot chocolate and bread for over 1000 children.
 


We are now looking for funds to provide Christmas presents for children in 2013. If you would like to make a donation please contact leander.holling@mysmallhelp.org or  make a donation directly here



Here are the winning Christmas cards designs from 2012.

We are continuing to sell last year's Christmas cards to raise funds for the 2013 years Chocolatadas. If you would like to order any of these Christmas cards please let us know so that we can organize payment and delivery to your door.

IN TRUJILLO

Our school teacher Deisy continues to give one to one tuition each afternoon to the 19 children in El Milagro, Trujillo that MySmallHelp has put into school. The children all now have their birth certificates, national identity cards and health insurance and they are progressing well at school.

In addition MySmallHelp is continuing to support Juan Milton and his family with food provision and help from Deisy.




IN CUSCO
We are now receiving volunteers to help with the cookie project which is providing an additional income to Anita and her family. Many thanks to the hostels Loki, Kokopelli and Millhouse for selling the cookies to help us to keep the project going and to the café Lets Go Bananas.


Big congratulations to Andres Quispe for graduating from high school. Andres is the first MSH student in Cusco to graduate from school. We are now working on helping Andres get into University and continue to help him to develop the land in Paru, his community so he can earn an additional income.

We are also now working in partnership with the San Martin and Uriel Garcia schools in Cusco who are delighted to be receiving our volunteers. If you are interested in teaching English or helping out at a special need school please do let us know. We do not charge for volunteering we just want to find people who want to help!
If you are interested in volunteering in Cusco or at any of our projects in Peru then please contact volunteerperu@mysmallhelp.org for more information.

IN OLLANTAYTAMBO AND THE SACRED VALLEY

MySmallHelp continues to run a daily school bus (Monday to Friday) for disabled children from Rumira (just outside Ollantaytambo) to the Arco Iris special school in Urubamba. Volunteers help make sure the children get safely to and from school and their homes in the morning and afternoon.

MySmallHelp Peru receives financial support from the Ollantaytambo municipality towards the running of the bus but the driver is not always available and many volunteers have suggested that we should raise funds to purchase a MySmallHelp Bus.


If you would like to support MSH with this project please do make a donation at the link below. If we have our own bus, then we will be able to provide a better service to the children and their families and make the project more sustainable.

Thanks to our volunteers and team we have found 4 new children over this year that now have their legal documentation and are able to attend the Arco Iris school.

We are also working with mothers of the disabled children and women from Paucarbamba and Yanahuara to make jam from local fruits.

Regarding health campaigns, we held dental campaigns in December last year in partnership with Desana Giving and have recently set up a partnership with Dental Projects Peru. The campaigns benefit the children and families of Paucarbamba, Yanahuara, Rumira and Phyri. MSH helped provide dental treatment and free toothbrushes and toothpaste to thousands of children over the last year to promote dental hygiene at home!
In July, a group of students from Lifeworks helped us build a greenhouse at Rumira school.  This project was then improved by a group of students from the University of Washigton sent from our friends at Centro Tinku. This project will benefit the children of the school so as the people from the community, by giving them the opportunity to include vegetables and different agricultural products on their daily meals, making it more nutritious.

We continue to produce adobe bricks at Donato Cahua´s house which we are collecting for the dining room (comedor)  project in Cachiccata  to benefit the nutrition of the children in this community.

And our BIGGEST achievement over the past year has to be helping Rita. Thanks to our friends in the UK who found Rita whilst on a trek to Machu Pichu she was brought to our attention and is now  walking with her prosthetic limb! Rita is 5 years old and has never walked before this year. MSH helped her and her mother to receive free flights through the LAN foundation and has organized fundraising through MSH UK to purchase her prosthetic limb and to help her to continue with her ongoing physio treatments in Cusco.

NOT TO FORGET LOURDES…
The reason MySmallHelp Peru exists is because of the chance of finding Lourdes Cjuno Manani. Lourdes has recently finished her first year of primary school and is now attending a new school on a Monday and Tuesday evening so that she can advance more rapidly. MSH volunteers help Lourdes to get home from her school at night and thanks to a kind donation from the Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) Lourdes is now learning to user her own laptop.

Lourdes is still attending ceramic workshops and has been making bracelets which have been sent to friends in the USA, UK and Germany.

Lourdes is very grateful for the continued support of MSH and our volunteers and is very excited that she will soon be receiving a new wheelchair from her good friend in North America.

Does anyone have any spare airmiles they would like to donate?
We are working to set up a programme to help reduce travel costs for volunteers to get out to Peru and Nepal to help our teams out on the ground. Depending on the airline you might be able to donate your airmiles directly to MSH or to an individual volunteer. If you would like to donate airmiles or help out in any other way please contact leander.holligs@mysmallhelp.org


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