A Fundraising Post

Dear All,

My name is Katie Campbell-Morrison. I am a 23 year old Peace Corps volunteer serving as a Community Health Volunteer in a small community of about 200 people named San Antonio de Cusicancha in Huancavelica, Peru. In the past year I have been working with 32 mothers in my community in a Healthy Homes Project. A Healthy Homes Project is a project to promote better nutrition, hygiene, disease prevention, childhood development and self-esteem in the rural households. The project is designed with 6 meeting and accompanying house visits. The meetings include PowerPoint’s and dinámicas (interactive activities), usually with an incredibly organized and passionate nurse from my health post coordinating the formal information part and while I coordinate non- formal education activities.

During the meetings we discuss topics from Peace Corps program goals, the project goals, my health post goals and necessities of the community. The topics that we have covered are: preventing childhood diseases, early childhood development, a healthy community, nutrition and hygiene. In the upcoming sessions we will cover early childhood development again, how to use and maintain an improved cook stove, self-esteem and domestic violence. In the house visits each month the mothers demonstrate what they have learned from the previous meeting and implement small changes in their household. Often during the house visits the mothers realize how much they know more and become excited when they can answer a question correctly, slowly increasing their self-esteem.

At the culmination of the project the mothers who have attended enough meetings and implemented changes will build an improved cook stove. The improved cook stoves help to improve quality of life of the mother and child by reducing smoke in the kitchen and risk of respiratory infections, reducing environmental contamination and reducing the amount of wood needed to cook. In the mountains of Peru it is customary to carry young children on a mother’s backs about 75% of the time. As a result the young children are exposed to the same smoke as their mothers, which reeks havoc on developing lungs.

The mothers that I have been working with in my site are phenomenal. Their support is one of the reasons I found the inspiration to stay in my site when things seemed difficult. Their kindness and willingness to learn and work through the ups and downs may come our way has helped to make the project a reality. I truly believe that I have learned more from them than they will ever learn from me and their thirst for knowledge has sustained and guided the project.

The mothers of my annex are equally incredible women. Tambo de San Antonio de Cusicancha has the highest rate of malnutrition and pregnancies in women under-25 of all the places that my health post cares for. It is located about 2.5 hours (hiking) from my town center, a hike that makes you it feel like you are walking into the sky. Many of the mothers have faces obstacles such as: graduating primary school still unable to read, social unrest, and a struggle to access protein. In the face of there there is still a desire to grow and a support from the community leaders that is non-existent in some other communities. The community knows that they have the strength within themselves to improve the life for the next generation.

Together with the mothers in Cusicancha we worked on a project plan and grant application to get funding from outside of Peru for the improved cook stoves. Currently we are in the process of raising money for the project and short $1253.62.

Any small donation would go to a wonderful cause and help exponentially in advancing our project. It is very easy to donate at: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-527-021 . Thank you so much for your time!