Trujillo

In August 2009 I worked for a NGO in the barrio of Milagro, Trujillo. The system of this NGO was to set-up informal preparatory schools for children who had never been to school and then put them into the state system the following year, but only with a bit of financial support, not complete.  

In Peru it is illegal for all children, of whatever age and whatever level of education, no to be in school. In 2010 I went back to visit the children I had worked with the year before, only to find that the NGO had pulled out, none of the children attended school, many worked in the rubbish dump, and nothing about their impoverished situation had changed, or looked likely to in the future.  

I felt extremely strongly that I couldn’t leave these children and their families without trying to help further. These children, each and every one, is wonderful and has the right to an education. If I could help and support these children to get an education then we could also give them the chance to create a life out of poverty. So after meeting and speaking to Leander Hollings (founder of MSH Nepal), knowing that she wanted to set-up MSH Peru we agreed to work together, and for it to be my responsibility to setup the program in Trujillo.  

After discovering that the formation of informal preparatory schools is unnecessary we decided on a program of help for the mothers. For this year we had no choice but to pay for all the children to attend school - including entrances fees, book, pens, pencils etc. If we hadn’t paid for everything these kids would have gone another year without school as it is near enough impossible for these women to pay for their children to attend school.  We interviewed each family and collected the information of each child e.g. age, grade, previous schooling. From this we could establish which children would be able to attend the state schools and which children would have attend the escolarisado, the state's system for children who have never attended school or whose education is too poor for them to be part of the state system. We had four children whose education was considered too bad or who had never attend school. For three of them they are going to be attending a school run by nuns, this was the mother’s personal choice, as she, like us wanted her children in school 5 days a week not just at weekends. The mother of the fourth child, Anderson, opted for the escolarisado option as she was not in favour of this school. All the other children with one exception will be attending the state schools. 

The one exception is a boy named Angel. Angel is 12 years old, and he has never attended school and is unable to speak. For Angel we have found a private school for children with learning difficulties. This is the one and only year we want to pay for these children to go to school. Over the next year we want to work with the mothers to help them start a micro-enterprise that will hopefully generate enough money for each of them to pay for their children to go to school next year and the years thereafter. The primary idea is that we want to teach the women to make artisan products from recyclable materials. This idea came about as some of the women and children work in the rubbish dump collecting recyclable goods to sell, we thought this would be a good way of not just generating money for the women but also highlighting that women and children are working in terrible, dangerous conditions in the rubbish dumps in Peru. Leander’s boyfriend Abel Torres is a very talented artist and maybe able to teach these women how to make such products. We have also come to an agreement with an artisan in Huanchaco, a beach town near Milagro, that we can share half his shop to sell our products.  

The second part of our work with these women is to get each and every one of them the legal documents that are rightfully theirs and their children’s, these being birth certificates, DÑI (national identity cards in Peru) and SIS ( free health insurance for children and the elderly). A lot of people living in the barrios never leave the barrios and quite often are unaware, or have not bothered, to go and get the legal documents they need and are there to help them. For example in the last month one of the children we work with, Marco, was involved in an incident that left him with a second degree burn to his leg. His mother took him to hospital but could not afford to keep him there as she did not have her SIS and could not afford to pay the medical bills herself. Therefore MSH Peru raised the money to put Marco back in hospital and have him treated properly, we got his mother the SIS which helped pay for the bed and some of the medication from the date of the SIS, but it did not cover everything and of course did not cover the skin graft he needed, but it certainly helped. If we had not helped, the situation could have been very nasty, but it does not need to be this way and this is what we want to communicate to these women. We have also just had news that the baby of one of the families we work with has also died, we are not aware of details as of yet but we do know that the mother did not tell anyone, or go to the doctor, when her child got sick. 

We want to help these women realise that there is help available to them, they are citizens of this country and have rights. Another major part of our project is teaching these women to read and write, this is not just their right as a citizen of Peru but their universal human right, without this right they have very little employability and also cannot help or take any interest in their child’s school work. Over the last week our MSH help representative has been buying all the uniforms, books and equipment needed for each of the children and in the following two weeks they will all be starting school…..no exceptions.