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To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. A Glimpse at How “the Other Half” Lives
To establish a context for the humanitarian efforts of Los Andes Mission, one only has to visit a large garbage heap in El Milagro, outside Trujillo, where garbage provides the main income for the people of this extremely poor community! The garbage covers literally acres and acres, leaving even a casual observer with an indelible memory. Hundreds and hundreds of poor people-- men, women and children--scour the garbage for remnants to gather and sell in order to eke out a basic existence.
Each scavenger in this surreal environment “specializes” in one particular product. For example, the 5-year-old boy we saw gathering cardboard, can trade in a kilo of his find for one tenth of one sol (equivalent to U.S. 3 cents), sufficient to buy one piece of bread. Others hunt out aluminum cans to sell to recyclers for a similar pittance. Any edible remnants of garbage provide the basis of meals for these impoverished people. Then, at the end of each hot dusty day, thousands of hogs are released on the same site for their main feed of the day where they forage the remnants!
To call these conditions sub-human is an understatement. While some of these folks, freshly down from the mountains of Peru, actually live right in the garbage heap, thankfully others have a relatively better existence, having claimed a plot of land in the nearby settlement El Milagro. Once their plot is registered, these families set aside precious savings in order to purchase adobe bricks, a few at a time, while meanwhile living in makeshift dwellings built literally from plastic and sticks and stones.
Each block of houses shares one water spigot, and water must be hauled by hand. To make matters worse, water only comes in every second day, and that for merely 20 minutes! The fact that these people can eke out an existence at all is certainly a testimony to their fortitude. Community Building for El Milagro
I, Maria, am a native of Trujillo, and along with my husband Rod, we founded Los Andes Mission in an attempt to better the life of these unfortunates that you read about above.
Amidst this setting, Los Andes Mission has established a community center from where we coordinate our humanitarian activities and services. Here local kids can play ping-pong or foosball, or engage in a host of other activities unavailable elsewhere in the community.
So our community center is the only facility of this type in this extremely poor part of town. We also provide meals for kids ages 8 to 16.
Local kids participate in activities such as art classes, English classes, Bible knowledge, physical education, celebrations for them and their families. We offer each child Christian values that will steer them away from a life of drugs and crime and that will motivate them to be a productive citizen.
Small Miracles in El Milagro The city of Trujillo has a growing population of 800,000 people. The area of town where we have been working is called “El Milagro” (the miracle) with a resident population of 12,000+. The city's garbage facility is located in this area, which receives the garbage from the whole metropolitan area. Many of the people in El Milagro are involved directly or indirectly in making their living from extracting cardboard, plastics or anything of value from the garbage pits. Whole families, including small children, work in almost inhumane conditions to make a few dollars a day, and some even live on the dump itself. It is to these people that we have been reaching out and whose lives we strive to make better.
One of the first things we did was to organize a holiday party for 200 of these children and many of their parents. We collected food, clothing and toys, and our three youngest children performed songs while the other young people helped to serve refreshments, and hand out clothing and other presents.
We have since taken on the job of improving the housing and living conditions for poor families in El Milagro. One typical family has 4 small children and hails from a rural area of the mountain region. They are trying to build a structure in El Milagro and are currently without running water or electricity, living in a makeshift hut. Los Andes Project adopted this family and is committed to help them with materials and labor so that they can have adequate housing, as well as donating beds, a stove and other household items. (This house is now complete with running water and electricity.)
We then began educational classes with the young people in the area, as well as taking them on recreational and educational outings to different parts of the city.
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