Community projects with children in Peru

Your help is needed to bring sunshine and happiness to the vulnerable children of Villa Maria in one of Peru’s largest shanty-towns.

Parents in Villa Maria have to work every hour under the sun to support their families. Often this means that their children are neglected and are susceptible to the negative influences of drugs and crime. We have been working in Villa Maria for over 10 years. Volunteers provide sports and creative activities to give children the focus and attention that they both need and deserve. You will organise the children’s time into a wide range of activities from football and swimming to arts and crafts, water fights and theatre. Its exhausting work but the reward is when you see their beaming smiles! The year round help brings much needed fun and laughter to the lives of disadvantaged children in this poverty stricken part of Peru.

This project is perfect for anyone with an interest in third world development issues who enjoys spending time with children and who wants to make a real difference to their lives. We do not ask that volunteers have any prior experience of working with children but that they come with an open mind and be eager and willing to muck in! Volunteers will have the unique opportunity of living and working with local Peruvians in one of the largest shanty-towns in the world, and as such the project is also ideal for any volunteers who wish to rapidly learn or improve their Spanish. Life is hard in Villa Maria and people scrape a living by any means possible- be it endless hours of working in a factory for a pittance, driving taxis, or selling stolen goods. With parents working every hour of the day and night the children and young people are often neglected and are left to look after themselves. Often this leads to the temptations of alcohol, substance abuse and violence. What is required is some attention and focus for their free time, to guide them away from such dangers.

The Villa Maria project was instigated by a Peruvian anti-drugs NGO (Non Governmental Organisation), CEDRO (Centro de información y educación para la prevención del abuso de drogas) by Alejandro Menendez, who was working with teenagers who had already become victims of drug abuse. The project was working to rehabilitate these teenagers and to also provide them with grants to study a trade (electrician, carpentry etc). Although funding was focused towards teenagers in trouble, Alejandro tried to dedicate part of his time to working with younger children on more of a preventative programme in the early 1990’s.

We began sending volunteers to work with the children over the summer months of 1998 and since then we have paid for 1000’s of kids to go swimming in the two Olympic sized pools located within the sports complex at Villa Maria. The initial aim of our involvement was very simple; to go into the communities of Villa Maria and offer games and organised sports to whichever kids were willing to participate. The project has now developed so much, that the help of volunteers is now needed year round.

Project options
June -  4 weeks duration, team of 16 volunteers, typically aged 18-35 years old with ideally a basic grasp of the Spanish language. We can offer advice for those with limited/no previous language experience & arrange Spanish courses in Spain & Latin America prior to the project.

April - December - 4-16 weeks duration, individual volunteers, typically aged 18 - 60 year old. This is better suited to more independent volunteers who have a good command of Spanish. 

December - April -  Volunteers help run the summer sports programme as part of a combined 3 month expedition involving a 3 week Spanish course in Quito prior to the project and followed by a 6 week adventure explorer. Volunteers who come to Villa Maria during the children's term time offer much needed assistance to the collection of local staff and volunteers who supervise, run and initiate a range of long term projects. At present these include a pre-school, two Andean music groups, a break dance group, several football and volleyball teams, a karate group, three cinemas in different regions of Lima, a games / homework club, weekly Sunday fairs, a stilt walking and circus skills group and a brass band. In addition there are other projects to fund local young people through various training schemes.

As well as contributing your time you will also bring a much needed financial commitment to Villa Maria. The donation that you make provides for both short and long term resources. It will buy flour for play-do, potatoes for printing, paints for faces, footballs, hula hoops, skipping ropes- and anything else you can think of, as well as the funds for the long term, year round projects that making your involvement in Villa Maria a genuine and sustainable commitment.