Did you know our transatlantic passage was a sponsored sail?
S/Y Pelerin
Colin Speedie & Louise Johnson
Thu 3 Jan 2013 11:23
More information on Association Vidas Peru is provided below (including a 2012 update), but the reason for us posting this particular blog is to ask you to help…
We’re helping Ronnie achieve his money-raising goal by inviting him as our crew and have made our own donations via Paypal. We hope that you can help too. If you’ve enjoyed following our progress on this Atlantic crossing, whether via this blog or AIS tracking, please consider making a gift donation. As Amy puts it, if during this festive and new year period, you’d have normally bought us a card, present or even a drink at the bar, please instead consider donating this amount to Association Vidas, Peru.
To donate securely use Paypal, go to https://www.paypal.com/uk. Then search for and donate to the account tiare_amy {CHANGE TO AT} hotmail {DOT} com . Myself and Colin can personally vouch that every pound donated will go (via Amy) straight to the charity, with no admin fees or any other type of deductions.
***All of your money will go straight to the charity in Peru.***
Information on Association Vidas:
This small charity, based in Peru, was founded in the 1990's and provides health care and education to the impoverished people & local Quechua communities of Ayacucho and beyond. The driving force behind the charity are husband and wife team Raquel Yupanqui Quicana (a Quechua nurse) and Máximo Candia Castillo (a Quechua pastor) who are supported by various groups and individuals from the UK and worldwide.
The largest projects include:
Vidas Clinic Quinua - a clinic situated in the town of Quinua (11,000ft up in the Peruvian Andes) which provides health care to locals who cannot afford government healthcare. This clinic started out as two useable rooms and now - with the hard work of Raquel and Max, the health professionals of the clinic and the fundraising, support and voluntary work from individuals and groups in the UK - is now a full time clinic with 7 rooms and health professionals such as technical nurses, microbiologist and an obstetrician. In the first quarter of 2009 the clinic treated over 1000 patients (and over 100 at outreach) who would have otherwise gone without healthcare.
Kindergarten Vidas - this kindergarten, founded by Raquel and Maximo provides education to 3yrs+ for children whose families are unable to send them to school otherwise. The kindergarten provides vital education to prepare the children, the majority of whom have successfully gone on to continue their education. As well as education for children Vidas also provides a morning meal (vital to learning and development) and parenting skills classes to improve family situations.
Other outreach projects include health delivery to isolated and impoverished communities - such as Putis (a Quechua mountain village in Satillana) Yanamilla (a very isolated village in the Andes with no basic amenities) and Ashaninca communities in the Rio Ene jungle area of Ayacucho.
2012 update from Raquel:
HEALTH:
Although we have short staff at health project, we were able to manage fairly good to both clinics in Quinua and San Melchor, however we have strength with the volunteers who came from abroad through Goshen University, MMI and PAMS, who supply for us health professionals and specialists. With these last two organizations we made three health campaigns. The first two, with MMI organizing Medical-Dental outreach to the Quechua Indian communities and we reached 1,188 patients in five communities, which was awesome! The most interesting was the Eye campaign in July with a big group of 60 volunteers between nationals and foreign professionals; we reached 3,001 patients at the ambulatory consultation. In the surgery they operated Cataracts, Pterygium and Strabismus.
Another wonderful work we are developing is the project: “healthy and clean houses” in the Quechua community of Condoray and next year we want to include Yanamilla. The person who touched deeply our hearts is Sonia the lady who was with severe anemia and epilepsy and could not work to maintain her family, she does not have husband. Thanks to your help we could help her from dying and now she has transformed life.
Another lovely work is the project “Adopt a patient with long-term illness” which we are developing in Quinua, San Melchor and Condoray, this patients are Diabetes, Epilepsy, Hypertension and Thyroid; thanks for your precious contribution to this ministry sending the medicines and financial help! We have 34 patients!
EDUCATION:
In March we started with 12 children but during the year have increased to 25 children. For us it is a big challenge to work with those little ones, not only teaching the subjects but also building their character. For this reason it is part of our curriculum to teach the Bible through stories and songs on Fridays. Every year we receive children with problems in the character because they come from separated parents or parents who are fighting each other. At parenthood program, as planned we shared themes which strength the relationship between parents bringing healthy growing for the child.
We are also giving attention to those children who do not have education opportunities because financial problems or because they come from very poor families. This is the case of Jairo from very poor family and Britney without father. The school makes room for those children to study, and they have made great improvements this year.