Dental Mission in Peru

20th March 2011                                                                                   

By Louise Whitaker                                 

Following Peros´ financial support for several communities affected by the floods back in January 2010, I have headed back out to Peru to volunteer to see how the communities are getting along- one year on.

First stop was the Desana Giving Dental Mission in Yanahuara.  Mysmallhelp (to whom Peros had donated money for the flood victims) and Desana Giving worked together in 2010 to support the flood victims with food, educational materials, clothes, a dental mission and the development of small

businesses to help the communities get back on their feet.

Desana Giving, with the help of Mysmallhelp, had arranged a second dental mission in the nearby community of Yanahuara in the Sacred Vally in Peru. A team of 5 student dentists, led by Dr Michael Houk carried out over 650 treatments on over 150 people from the local community. Members of the community who we had helped over the last year were also able to attend and all procedures were free of charge. 

Dental care is largely neglected in poor communities in Peru. Education on the importance of dental cleanliness is largely overlooked and it was shocking to see children as young as 5 having 5 or 6 teeth removed as a result of decay. My job was to help with the translation, to reassure the children and adults who were having procedures and to provide advice on the importance of regularly cleaning your teeth.  There is no doubt that children have a sweet tooth here, children love to drink Inca Cola and Cocoa Cola but the results of this are really shocking. It was really brought home to me when I was speaking to the mother of one young girl who had just had 4 teeth out. I said that really she should limit fizzy drinks to one a week, because they contained lots of sugar which was bad for her daughter´s teeth. The mother looked completely shocked, like she had never made the link before. It was then that I realised Desana Giving and Mysmallhelp were doing great work in educating a small number of families, but that this was jus t a small drop in the ocean. 

Anita Gurung to sit her SLC exam this year.

Anita, a beautiful and shy 17 years old girl, is preparing to sit her SLC  in this month . She is performing well at school and secured first division in her sent up exam but teachers think that she could do better. When we meet she’s polite, softly spoken but clearly a happy soul who is bright and conscientious.  





 She has ambition to be a nurse when she leaves school. Despite her steady progress My Small Help remains concerned about Anita and her future. Her situation has improved because she has been placed in a new home away from her own family. This is still considered to be the best option for her wellbeing and educational progress. When she is not at work she helps around the home with cooking and cleaning. 

She is the first girl to appear SLC  examination among all the students helped by Mysmallhelp. So, Mysmallhelp wishes for her bright future and will be happy to help her in near future too.

Kate & Josephine talk briefly about their experiences as an accountant volunteering in Kathmandu, Nepal & Sierra Leone, Africa

Trip to Basantapur Durbar Square with children of Marybert.

by Jyoti Young
                           

The children of Marybert School and Orphanage were all set for a trip down memory lane on Friday when  MySmallHelp organised a day trip to the museum at Durbar Square, Kathmandu. Excitement and much giggling surrounded the outing as 16 children and MSH squeezed onto the local bus. However, load shedding (power cuts) meant that our best laid plans were challenged; the museum was closed because there was no electricity.

Disappointed faces were soon replaced by smiles as we sat in the warming sun with sketch pads and pencils and drew pictures of the beautiful temples all around. Some of the children took control of the MSH camera and put their artistic talents to good use (and some of us now have around 300 images to edit!). The children were treated to samosa and snacks before we were shoehorned back into local tuk tuks and returned to Marybert School and Orphanage for jam and bread.

Although we could taste the disappointment at the closure of the museum it was heartening to see just how easily the children adapted to the new plan to draw the temples. They took comfort at being in the company of their friends and people who cared for them. They were quick to pose for lively photographs and experiment with different camera angles, and it was another enjoyable opportunity for them to bond more with MSH and enjoy the company of staff and volunteers.

For me (Jo Young, volunteer) the highlight of my day was when the children told me that I am in their daily devotional prayers, and finding a continuous stream of little hands entwined with mine (like human spaghetti) as we walked the chaotic streets back to the tuk tuk station avoiding cars and motorbikes, cycles, portable scales weighted down with vegetables, groups of tourists, meandering high school students, and local people who were keen to see why there was a group of 16 primary school children out in force.

So, although memory lane was closed on this occasion, we made memories of our own that will be cherished in our hearts and photo albums.

In other news, MSH has relocated to a new office where there is running water and bathroom facilities. The new space also accommodates the Mysmalldesign team so that we can strengthen our working relationship and enjoy working on the different strands as one larger team.

Mysmalldesign is a team of web and IT professionals who will create websites for international clients whilst donating 10% of all profits back to Mysmallhelp. It’s an idea that’s been circulating for a while but this year sees it come to fruition, after all you can throw a seed on the ground in the wrong season and get nothing, but in the right environment it will flourish.

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.  

Sacred Valley Project

The Sacred Valley project is an NGO based in Ollantaytambo whose aim is to provide schooling and accommodation to girls aged between 11 and 17 whose access to education has been limited through location or lack of funds. Following a highly successful first year in Ollantaytambo providing schooling opportunities to 6 girls, Alex Ball expanded the reach of his work and acquired a new house for the same 6 girls, and 6 more, to live in!

Our first day of working in partnership with The Sacred Valley Project began in typical Peruvian fashion - 2 hours late - but once we got started we were given a brief tour of the house, 4 dormitories, a dining room, kitchen and a study room all situated around a central courtyard, it was off to work!! Our first task was to tidy up the general areas there was a lot of debris and rubbish lying around due to fact it had been a carpenters yard and we collected many sacks full of rubbish. Although the girls' parents had already visited the site and completed a lot of the work (part of their obligation to support the project their daughters have been chosen for), they had been unable to secure the roofing due to rain. So up the ladder went Team Sweden (Karl, Jonathan and Christian) and myself (not from Sweden) and managed to fix plastic to the ventilation shafts to ensure the girls did not get soaked when sleeping!! This involved 2 people holding ladders for the other 2 who were precariously balanced on the rungs and rafters, one holding the nail with the other banging it in with their other hands hanging on for dear life!!! However by the end of the day the roofing was secure and we rewarded ourselves with a well earned glass of chicha (fermented maize drink) with the locals.
                           

The second day we were finalising everything that the girls would need in order to live happily in the house. Hard manual labour was done in an attempt to level out the courtyard using pickaxes and shovels especially in front of the shower and toilet block, not helped by the puppy, Macho (so named because he'll be the only boy in the house), who insisted on playing with us every 2 seconds!! Following this we spent time shoring up the last remaining hole in the roof and putting together the last of the beds as well as sweeping and washing the floors. It was starting to look like a proper boarding house.

Day 3 started incredibly early with a trip to Urubamba at 6.30 to pick up the remaining mattresses, bedside cabinets and tables. First we picked up the truck following a combi ride and Karl, Johnathan and Christian hopped in the back as there was no room up front. Following a brief stop to pick up pigs, who shared the back of the truck with Team Sweden, we ended up in Urubamba where we breakfasted on lomo saltado (sauteed beef) and moved on to pick up the furniture. This time Karl, Jonathan and Christian shared the ride back with all of the furniture as we travelled along the road, half of which had collapsed into the river the day before, and we unloaded and stored all of the material away in the house in Ollantaytambo. Afterwards we further attempted to clear the courtyard, which was surprisingly big and called an end to it after a long day! The girls moved in on Sunday and are very happy with their accommodation thanks in part to MySmallHelp.

Matteo Lewent (MSH Volunteer)

My first week of volunteering with MySmallHelp Peru in Ollantaytambo

I arrived in Ollanta the weekend of a baptism. A very important baptism - it was not only a double baptism for two sisters but two MySmallHelp workers were the godmothers for each of the girls. Not only that but the elder of the sisters, 18 year old Lurdes Juno Mamani, is also the primary reason that MSH are in this little town. She’s an extraordinary disabled young lady who’s given me much pleasure this week with my various visits to her house and with her out in nearby towns.

One of the most traditional Peruvian customs at the baptism is for the child who is being baptised to have their hair cut by guests, godparents, parents etc. and in cutting the hair you donate some money to their education. The child is sat in front of a dish with petals on it and by the end of the ceremony the dish is full of hair and money too. The child, in this case Yolanda, was given sweets to keep her entertained whilst we were all pulling and chopping at her hair. Don't worry, she gets taken to the hairdresser afterwards!

There’s lots to do here. I have to admit that my image of volunteering was all hands-on, getting muddy, clearing things up, doing jobs that perhaps others weren’t keen on doing etc. I hadn’t even considered the fact that there’s an awful lot of admin to do behind the scenes - especially at the early stages of starting up an NGO, and especially somewhere like Peru. Thankfully since I’ve been here MSH have got their registered charity status here in Peru - after lots of bureaucracy. Great news.

So this last week I’ve been practicing my Spanish with Lurdes, writing quite a few emails on behalf of MSH, compiling spreadsheets, going to meetings with partnership NGOs in the area (mainly Awamaki), visiting guinea pig projects, putting up posters and generally rather enjoying myself. 

This morning me and the other four volunteers made toys for physical therapy use by disabled children in the area. Jonathan made a wooden boat, Christian a little car and Karl, Matt and I made ‘putting the square shape in the square hole etc.’ toys. There’s more to do - blowing bubble mixes to make, play dough too, rattles and no doubt we’ll have more ideas this afternoon.
We are all living in the volunteer house in Ollanta together. Similar to a hostel but it’s lovely to call somewhere home for a while and be able to buy ingredients with a more long term dinner plan than pasta and sauce - I’ve been travelling already for over 5 months in South America.

It’s been an important past week too because the schools all went back on Monday 7^th - so we had to organise some of the children we support getting places at the school, purchasing new stationary for them and organising transport for them to the school. It’s about a 20 minute walk, so not far by Peruvian standards, but the Headmaster’s requested the children don’t walk so that they are more punctual, cleaner when they arrive etc. In rainy season the dirt road isn’t ideal!

This coming weekend we have some international dentists coming to a nearby health centre for three days - hence we’ve been promoting that with posters and word-of-mouth. The better Spanish speakers amongst us will also be translating for the dentists too - very important when you’ve got a terrified child in the dentist’s chair.
So there’s always something to keep me entertained and it’s a lovely spot to be for a month. Ollanta’s got ruins either side of the river, a charming central plaza and bustling market. When it’s not raining, it’s beautiful!
Right, I’m off to supervise two girls we support with their homework….