American Alpaca Owners Extend A Helping Hand
Quechua Benefit began in 1996 with a simple request. Don Julio Barreda, a world famous Alpaca breeder from Peru, asked Dr. Mario Pedroza and Mike Safley if they could help the children in his pueblo and Mario responded, “Could we give them dental care?” “Bueno,” said Don Julio. With this simple exchange Quechua Benefit was born.
For the past twelve years, alpaca breeders across America, far more fortunate than the Quechua Indians of Peru, have opened their hearts and given to Quechua Benefit. This generosity has made it possible to provide free dental care to more than 30,000 people in forty communities, to aid earthquake victims in Ica, to respond to bone cracking winter freezes with antibiotics and alpaca blankets, to help sister Antonia, an 85 year-old Maryknoll nun, feed 800 people a day at the church in Yanque, to build dormitories to house school children who live too far from school to attend, to support twenty-six girls at the Mosoq Runa orphanage in Macusani, to help deserving young adults attend college in Arequipa, and to fund life-saving surgeries for the poorest of the poor. The generosity has accomplished much. The need is relentless.
All of these experiences provided Quechua Benefit with insight into the hidden truth behind the children’s shy smiles: neglect, hunger, domestic abuse, and missing parents. Trip by trip, the charity has searched for a way to answer a nagging question: How can they create a permanent solution in the lives of the young people with running noses and abscessed teeth who find their way to our mobile dental clinics? Year by year they built up a balance sheet of good will with local mayors, priests, nuns and school teachers.
At the root of Peru’s poverty are universal social conditions: unemployment, alcoholism, family violence, single mothers with few resources, and worse yet, orphans with no hand to hold. Parents, if any, are often too poor to feed their children, who go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. The little ones suffer first and most often, their eyes dulled by hunger. The questions that gnaws at Quechua Benefit is how, even in a small way, can we snap this cycle of despair—repair a life and touch someone who will go on to touch another. The goal is simple, the task is complicated.
The need is undeniable. Forty percent of the Indian population in the highlands is undernourished, too few children graduate from high school, and even fewer advance to higher education. Infant mortality is 12.5% at one year one and reaches over 25% by age ten. The life expectancy of an adult is 55 years. The average annual income of the Quechua peasant is $872 US dollars. Children are abandoned, orphaned, and many live in remote areas without schools. Single mothers are commonplace.
Peru’s society is complex. There are no government traditions of social welfare for the peasants in the highlands, no large private charitable foundations, and little means of delivering help directly to the poor. The Roman Catholic Church in Peru has traditionally been the source of social safety nets administered in an ad-hoc fashion, pueblo by pueblo. These informal programs often receive operating funds from foreign religious congregations of all denominations or from secular organizations similar to Quechua Benefit. In the past year this practice has begun to change. Pope Benedict XVI, elected in April, 2005, appointed new Bishops in Peru to enforce a conservative church doctrine, which focuses on evangelism and administration of the sacraments. This new policy has taken precedence over the historical role of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru, which since the time of Pope John Paul II has included providing social services to the poor.
Quechua Benefit has been looking for a successful model, a reason to hope, a permanent solution. Our search led us to a former priest, Jean Bouquet and his wife Silvia Fischer, a Swiss teacher, who operate a children’s home, Allin Kwsay. This home is different than the others that Quechua Benefit supports. It was founded in response to a series of tragic incidents in Coaza, a small town near Macusani where the population of 3,000 live on a steep mountainside 14,000 feet above sea level, three hours from the main road. A diminutive Catholic chapel is perched at the entry to town, looking down over the wheat-thatched roofs and crooked streets where a river flows through the center, lending the sound of rushing water to the outwardly peaceful surroundings.
Father Jean came to Coaza in 1986 and Silvia in 1989. In 1991, a series of six murders, committed within one year, shocked the seemingly happy locals. All of the victims, as well as the perpetrators, were a part of Jean and Silvia’s flock. One victim was a young woman who was raped and beaten to death by young men who knew her well. Silvia and Jean grieved, filled with disbelief. They could not reconcile the innocent smiles and deceivingly docile natures of the murderers with the crime. The victim was their friend. How could this happen?
After much soul searching, they faced hard facts. Family violence was commonplace, learned by each of the young perpetrators in their family homes where discipline was administered with fists and rods and where their fathers beat their mothers. Jean and Silvia’s analysis established that the murderers’ experiences were not isolated exceptions. This social condition is not exclusive to the poor Quechua communities in Peru; it is a universal malady that feeds on the emotional deficits born of poverty, and hopelessness.
The difference, in Coaza, is that Father Jean and Silvia did something; they built Allin Kawsay, a home to thirty-four pupils made up of orphans, abandoned children with living parents, and kids from families so poor that their parents cannot care for them. Quechua Benefit supports similar homes in Peru, but Allin Kwsay is unique. The residents are half boys and half girls; there are greenhouses; and sheds full of chickens, rabbits, cuy, pigs, and rabbits. A trout hatchery generates cash flow. The children have a full schedule of daily chores, raising the meat and vegetables that sustain the home. They are immersed in cultural values that emphasize mutual respect, self sufficiency, self esteem, and education. Each child is encouraged to embrace continuing education beyond high school and to learn a trade or profession. The home is owned by a foundation that is separate from the church.
The staff, much larger than similar facilities, is trained to instill values and to encourage each child to live out those values in a culturally appropriate manner. Jean and Silvia train teachers at the schools their children attend, passing on their methods to teachers, parents, and other students from the Coaza community. In recent years, their ministry to prevent family violence has spread out to other highland communities. Their success is evident in the lives of the children who have lived and graduated from Allin Kwsay. Many have gone to Arequipa or Juliaca for higher education, and many have broken the cycle of family violence and poverty to become stable, productive parents and valuable members of their communities.
The home feeds itself and earns needed funds from selling produce and trout. The facility has been thriving for more than ten years. Its guiding principle is to create emotionally integrated adults who live in peace and prosperity with their families and contribute to their communities.
The model created in Coaza can be replicated in other communities. The investment is not prohibitive and the dividends can compound through future generations. With twelve years on the ground and with the continued support and open hearts of alpaca breeders, Quechua Benefit will build a similar home and permanently change young lives for the better.
With this idea in mind, Mario and Mike visited Peru in March of 2008 to search for a location where such an orphanage could be built and nurtured into a sustainable community. They searched for an ideal location, intending to purchase an appropriate property. The search took them to Chivay, a pueblo of 10,000 people that is located in the Colca Valley, a four-hour drive from Arequipa. At 12,000 feet above sea level, the Colca is characterized by gravity-defying green terraces that cascade down canyon walls. Curtains of rock terraces suspend cultivated plots above the Colca River, which runs twice as deep as the Colorado River on its journey through the Grand Canyon. Condors nest on the steepest canyon walls and soar daily above the snowy peaks of the six volcanic sisters— Ampato, Sabancaya, Hualca, Hucalca Mismi, Quettuisha, and Sepregina. They shadow the valley below, each bleeding rivulets of melting snow that nourish crops of papas, quinoa, onions, fruits, and maize that have been grown there since man domesticated plants. Alpacas on the high terraces give way to cows and sheep on the journey to the valley floor.
Tourism has taken hold in the valley. But when locals are asked if it helps the town’s economy, the reply was, “Not really, the hotel is full but it is owned by someone from Lima.” When a lady in the square at Yanque is asked what she thought of the tourists, she replied, “They come, they take our pictures, and they leave no money.”
Quechua Benefit recently purchased two acres of land that lies between Chivay and Yanque. They plan to break ground in March 2009. With continuing help and generosity, Quechua Benefit will endeavor to create a long-term, sustainable children’s home for orphaned, abandoned, and poverty-stricken boys and girls. The adobe buildings will house 100 children at full capacity with an infrastructure that includes a kitchen, dining room, library, wood and machine shops, sewing room, computer lab, greenhouses, staff quarters, study hall, and small barns for chickens, rabbits, cuy, pigs, and milk cows. A medical clinic capable of accommodating volunteer surgical teams from abroad will be equipped and built. The goal is to create a safe environment to nurture solid citizens who will in turn raise intact, healthy families.
The home will receive children from all the fourteen pueblos in the valley and has the potential to put a serious dent in the need to care for at-risk children. The entire staff will be trained by Jean and Silvia, including the teachers, cooks, and a horticulturist. The children will learn to tend the vegetables and animals that will provide nutritious meals for the home. There will be quarters for volunteers from colleges, churches, medical professionals and Quechua Benefit supporters, who can teach and labor with the children. Graduates will be encouraged and supported in their quest for higher education. Hopefully the love, values, and lessons in personal responsibility will carry them far.
This vision of a future mission for Quechua Benefit would not be possible without the experience gained in the last twelve years since Don Julio Barreda invited the Americian alpaca breeders to help his village of Macusani. The experiences collected over multiple trips to Peru by dozens of volunteers would not have happened without the generosity of hundreds of alpaca breeders around the world.
This tiny project will not resolve endemic hunger, the numbers of orphans, lack of resources, and apathy by the government that prevails in the highland of Peru. But it will help the small children, lucky enough to find their way to the home in Chivay, who would otherwise have no help at all. Quechua Benefit asks for your support, both moral and monetary, in pursuit of what is currently a dream. Each contribution will bring the vision closer to reality. One small step at a time can create a new beginning for children who are without advocates. Please contact www.quechuabenefit.org
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