A member visits projects supported by the Fund in Peru

The experiences of Mr. Claude Echard, December 2006

It will have taken us more than three hours in the dust and chaotic traffic jams of Christmas Eve to get from Villa Salvador to Laderas de Chillon, north of Lima. There, too, we are entering a school and day-care center in a very difficult and dangerous neighborhood in the Lima suburbs.

Here it is the last day of school, and we are arriving in the middle of the children's party. The association "Hatamy Warmi" (Arise, woman!), which runs the center, has brought together the parents (essentially the mothers) and their children for a double farewell party. Good-bye to the children who are leaving on vacation, and good-bye to the school building, because the school is supposed to move 800 meters further in the same neighborhood.

When we arrive, we are greeted by thunderous applause, and the president, Martha, interrupts the proceedings to introduce us and to thank us for the support that Terre des Hommes and the 1% Fund have provided for carrying out the current project: construction of a new school building on the other side of the neighborhood that will not only be larger but will also be the property of Hatamy Warmi.

After an exchange of speeches, the party can continue. Dressed in resplendent costumes, probably sewn by their mothers in the workshop of the day-care center, the children are acting out scenes of the Christmas story - not as a missionary exercise but as a continuation of a tradition that dates back to the 16th Century - under the admiring gaze of their mothers.

Martha takes advantage of the occasion to give me a rapid tour of the premises: classrooms for children of different ages, lounges, etc. We pack into the 4x4 of Terre des Hommes and set off with several members of the governing committee of Hatamy Warmi for the construction site of the new school, renamed "Jesus educator of Chillon". There, a large sign shows us the importance of the role of the 1% Fund in this project.

In spite of the unfinished look of the site, all the persons concerned are convinced that everything will be ready when classes recommence in March 2007. Even the pole of the electric power line planted squarely in the middle of a soon-to-be classroom is no problem, because there are only some administrative details to clean up, and they know that on January 8 the power company will let them know what day of the month they will be coming to move the power line off the school grounds.

Particular interest attaches to the fact that Hatamy Warmi is the owner of the building and the land: the objective of the project is to be able to serve more students and to do more (particularly to recruit a psychologist to offer help to those mothers who feel the need for the support). In the longer term, another parcel of land and another building are foreseen, in order to separate the teaching activities from those involving the mothers of the children.

I am offered some gifts and some drawings by the children for the 1% Fund, and after many expressions of thanks on both sides we set off for Lima, exhausted and dusty but generously compensated by the looks and smiles of these tenacious women who seem to have drawn strength from adversity.

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