Tom and Maribel really pulled this off nicely! Our first success story comes to you from an elementary school in the village of Monte Hermoso, Morrope, Lambayeque Province. One of our goals is to assist people with self-sustaining projects. This one met all of criteria for selecting a project, and these criteria may change somewhat as Promesa Peru grows. In this case, we asked that the total funding be less than $500 US and that it be self-sustaining (Future materials will be bought from the proceeds of sales). You can see in the picture below the items that Promesa Peru bought to get this school project into a position where they can increase their productivity. The money they get from the sale of their etched gourds is used to first buy new materials to continue the project, and second, to buy needed school supplies. The gourds are grown and dried by the students on the school grounds. The art of etching dried gourds is part of the Mochic culture and most, if not all, of the local children are Mochicas. Their items are sold at local art fairs and we hope we can find regular buyers for their art at tourist souvenir shops. Note the completed art gourds on the right side of the table.
Click the picture to see it full size.
Tom, who is widely known as Chiclayo Gringo (see his blog:
http://chiclayogringo.blogspot.com/) and his lovely wife, Maribel scoured the area and found this project that needed funding. It was a serendipitous situation where they were scouting for opportunities for us to help and a teacher from this school, Escuela Jorge Chavez Darnell, just happened to be in the area trying to find funding for his school's project. That chance meeting brought about the results pictured in this story. All of our projects have to have measurable results and we will be bringing those to you in the future as the kids make use of the materials provided.
If you are wondering who Jorge Chavez Dartnell was, click here:
http://hispanicpilots.net/website/txt/birds/darnell.pdf
The picture above is the director of the school, Martin Rolando Angeles Alburquerque, and Maribel speaking into the microphone. She is using a microphone because this was part of a major event at the school and there were about 200 to 300 people in attendance. That is Tom standing behind the children who are wearing their brand new Promesa Peru tee shirts.
This was the place the event was held and in the foreground you can see children doing a typical Peruvian dance and the table holding the donated items all the way at the back in the center. We are doing one more project at this school to help the sports program. Funds are a real issue in Peru, much more so than here in the USA. We are using the remainder of the money we collected to buy soccer balls that we will present in December. The leftover funds are not nearly enough to supply a school of this size with all of the balls and equipment they need. If you can help, please see our web site, below:
Please visit the web site, http://www.promesaperu.org/.
