Empowering Indigenous Youth for a Brighter Future

Dearest Supporters,

It has been a season of change at Amantani as 2025 closed out and 2026 began. Our head of fundraising and partnerships moved on to new things and our new communications coordinator – Andrea – joined the team. If you follow us on social media, you will have seen that Andrea has been working to share not only what our young people are up to, but also more about what’s going on in Peru that affects education and employment.

We’re finalising our 2025 annual report as we speak (with staff changes, it’s taken us a little longer than usual) and will share our results with you very soon.

For now, here’s a summary of the last few months:

Pathways Programme

The year started with the final phase of the Pathways Programme. Of the initial 27 participants, 24 attended the Amantani Academy, giving them an academic boost to help them with the entrance exams and what comes next. Some extra vocational orientation sessions helped them to home in on what and where they wanted to study.

Beca 18 Support Programme

Our partnership with PRONABEC (the agency in charge of Beca 18) helped us to implement the school in Santa Clotilde as an exam centre, greatly reducing travel time and costs for 142 students from remote Amazonian communities. Our Beca 18 Academy helped 93 students work on their communications and maths and almost 80% improved their test scores. 90 students in Loreto and 59 in Cusco took the exam at the end of November.

However, the year ended on a worrying note, with the government announcing issues with the 2026 budget. Instead of the 20,000 scholarships originally promised, there are now only 5,000 available.

We had hoped that the expansion of our support programme, would increase uptake of the scholarships in our communities. However, with only half the places available compared to last year, the list of “pre-selected” applicants is far shorter than expected: only eight of our candidates made the list. We are working hard with these young people to ensure they secure the scholarship. We have been trying to support the other hopefuls as best we can and will help anyone who wishes to apply to the programme again in the coming year.

Scholarships Programme

Since the academic year started at the end of March, most of the students have returned to classes. During the long summer break, many have been working or headed back to their communities to support their families.

We are very excited to welcome 25 new students in Cusco this year, thanks to a generous grant. 23 of these joined us from our Pathways Programme and we added two of the unsuccessful Beca 18 candidates. Eighteen of them are already enrolled in colleges and universities, while the other seven are working on getting into their chosen courses. This means we that this year, we will be working 98 students in total, across Cusco and Iquitos.

Running for Change

We have some wonderful supporters running marathons to raise funds for Amantani this year! Anthony – from our long-term partner, Shoe Zone – and Aaran – who raised has raised nearly 1,000 for us through challenge events – will be lacing up their running shoes in London at the end of the month. Five new friends – Andrea, Florian, Ilja, Lars and Michael – head to Peru in May and will run the Lima marathon on our behalf.

Our warmest thanks to all of you who have donated so far! Please do share their pages with your family and friends to help the runners – and our students – achieve their goals. And to the runners themselves: we are so grateful and wish you the best of luck!

Thank you  |  Gracias  |  Añay!