Thursday, April 14, 2011

Working in El Milagro


Louise Whitaker
10th April 2011
El Milagro is a poor barrio between the laid back surf town of Huanchaco and Trujillo, Peru´s third largest city. El Milagro means miracle.  This part of Peru is desert and not a lot grows here. There is little water. Houses are constructed out of adobe type material, old plastic bags and tarpaulins and the floors are just hardened sand, concrete and dirt. Water is delivered in by the municipalidad every 8 days and families top up this free water buy buying 12 buckets worth for 3 soles.

It is in this area that MySmallHelp has chosen to work. The Trujillo team of Deisy and Helen have spent the last 2 months busily helping 5 mothers enroll 16 of their children (some of whom were working in the rubbish dump with them, collecting 1kg of plastic bottles to receive just 1.5 soles) in to school. This hasn´t been an easy task, as paperwork was missing, names had been mis-spelt and some of the mothers illiteracy slowed down the work. The children of these mothers are in 6 different schools close to where the mothers live. Some of the children have special needs or learning difficulties and the schools they are in reflect this. Deisy, Helen and Leander have been busy supporting these mothers and finding funds to enable these mothers to send their children to school safe in the knowledge that the fees will be paid for the first year.

Our recent meeting with the mothers was to understand what skills and abilities the mothers have to enable them to set up little businesses, that they can run from home, which will enable them to earn money so they don´t have to rely on foreign donations.

We spoke about numerous ideas. The favoured one seemed to be working with a Limenian tshirt designer who can help the women learn how to screenprint his designs on to tshirts to be sold in Trujillo and Huanchaco to tourists. We are busy now working out the costs of this, as water is required for this process and it is not in great supply here.  MySmallHelp already has shops selling these tshirts in Cusco and in Lima. The next stage is to write a business plan  and conduct some market research in the area.

The pictures below show the barrio of El Milagro
















The truck from the municipalidad bringing in water




No comments: