Education & nutrition for children in Peru

I hope all is well. Twenty-eight students and three teachers were involved in this year’s Impington International College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, trip. Thanks to everyone who donated to their fundraising pages and the students’ hands-on work we were able to accomplish so much over their ten day stay.

The final terrace of the vegetable garden was cleared of rocks and levelled out. Drip-irrigation was installed and vegetable seedlings were planted, including onion, beetroot, lettuce and cabbage.

The temporary large stone steps between the main school and the classroom which was built on the first Impington trip were replaced (lots of rock which was removed from the vegetable garden went into the concrete mix.)

We used part of the funds raised to build an oven in the school. This will be used primarily for baking bread and for larger-scale school meals and celebrations.

Fifteen students received one-on-one teaching in maths, languages, English and art. The school storeroom and library was also given a good clean and sort.

A large mural was painted to celebrate the relationship with the school and Impington International College.

As is tradition the trip was finished off with dance and food. 

Thank you so much to all of you who donated to this year’s trip and helped us achieve what we did in such a short space of time. Thank you also to all of you who donated in support of previous trips which allowed us to add more each year culminating in finishing the vegetable garden and other projects this year. 

There is still more to do in 2025…!

cheers

I hope all is well with you. It has been a great couple of months on the project in Perú thanks to your fantastic donations.

Mother’s Day was celebrated this month with folkloric dance, gifts and food. The day is a welcome respite for the mothers whose gruelling irregular work under the sun from dawn ’til dusk in the chacras (irrigated agricultural fields) is only available for a few days during each crop cycle.

Since we started the projects in 2006 we have supplied the children with daily fruit. We also buy gas each month so they can receive a hot meal with the basic supplies the government provides. Add to this the vegetables that we now grow in the vegetable garden and we are making sure they receive nutritious food each day they are at school. We have seen remarkable positive results with their annual medical check-ups which the doctors confirm is due to the daily fruit and the vegetables.

We have installed water filters in the school so the children have access to drinking water all the time. The water in the community, which is only available for a couple of hours in the early morning each day when we fill the storage tanks, isn’t drinkable.

Each year we provide every student with their own workbooks for language comprehension and grammar (Spanish) and maths so they can follow lessons and work individually when the teacher takes another class. We only have one teacher per two grades and the academic levels of the children vary greatly as more students join the school with limited prior teaching. By having their own workbooks they can get on with set work at their own pace when the teacher is not available.

We continue to welcome the next generation of children into the school. Silvia was one of our first students graduating 6th grade in 2007. Her brother Sadán, shown here, graduated in 2016 and is about to finish secondary school.

For those of you in the UK we will be taking on the London Bridges Charity Challenge once again on Saturday 3rd August followed by a reunion in a pub. We plan to walk the fifteen bridges and 12 miles (20km) from Tower Bridge to Putney Bridge where we will have a Phoenix reunion in a pub there. 

As we tick off the bridges we will also take on the Phoenix treasure hunt to find objects and landmarks that are associated with our work in Latin America so feel free to bring the family too. Please let us know by emailing me on dom@thephoenixprojects.org if you are interested in joining us from the start, halfway or even just for the reunion in Putney.

We still have extra spaces for the Patagonia Challenge in November so if you are interested please do let us know as we will need to know final numbers by September and for those of you with Instagram we recently started to update our account once again after a couple of years’ hiatus so please do seek us out on phoenix_flying_2020

Have a great June

Cheers

Links:

• London Bridges Charity Challenge