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Peru Treks & Adventure - Community
Projects
Donation of School Equipment
to Local Schools
Since 2003 Peru Treks has undertaken
more than 60 distributions of school equipment to schools in the
mountain villages. In the last couple of years we have mainly
concentrated on helping schools in the district of Ocongate
(Quispicanchi Province), a very poor region close to the Ausangate
mountain. Communities include Upis, Chilca, Rodeana, Pachanta,
Pucarumi, Andamayo, Ccoñamuro, Pinchimuro and Checaspampa. We also
help schools in Tiracanchi (district of San Salvador, Calca
Province) and in Amaru (district of Pisac, Calca Province).
When we visit a school we try to
donate the following items to each child:
Exercise book (100 pages, square
ruled), plastic folder, 2 pencils, pencil sharpener, eraser,
ruler, packet of crayons (usually 12 crayons in each packet) or
packet of coloured pencils depending on age of children. The cost
of each packet is about US$3.
We also donate the following items to
each teacher: boxes of plain paper (white A4 photocopier type),
card of various colours, paints and brushes, ballpoint pens,
encyclopaedia, books, dictionaries, educational posters and
additional crayons and coloured pencils. Sports items such as
footballs, volleyballs, volley ball nets, etc are also welcomed.
Since the equipment that we give to
the children has to be the same for each child, Peru Treks mainly
buys these items using profits from the company. If visitors would
like to donate items then we would recommend waiting until you
arrive in Cusco to buy items in a local shop. Our office staff
will be happy to accompany you to help you make the purchases. If
you prefer to bring a few items from home then we suggest that you
bring items such as pencils and crayons. These items are less
bulky than exercise books and paper which are best bought in
Cusco. However we'll find a good home in one of the village
schools for anything that you bring. Donations left by our clients
and visitors to our office probably account for about 20% of our
school equipment donations.
In many instances
when our clients have brought sufficient items to donate (value of
equipment over US$150) we can arrange a visit to a school so that
you can participate in the distribution. Peru Treks provides all
transport costs and personnel free of charge. Often some of the
schools that we visit are fairly remote and involve a long and
dusty ride in the back of a pick-up. However the rewards of seeing
the school children receive school books, paper, pens, crayons and
posters make the journey seem well worthwhile.
If you are a school
teacher you might also like to try to set up some kind of cultural
exchange between your own school and a school in one of the
villages. You could take some photos of your students at work,
your school and even of your town or city and also get your
students to produce artwork that you could bring with you to Peru.
If you could organize a small collection of say US$100 we can buy
school equipment to take to the school. When you visit the school
in one of the mountain communities you can then take photos of the
children studying. I'm sure you have better ideas than us, we'll
try to help out to make the project successful.
We would also like
to take the opportunity to thank all of our clients who have done
the Inca trail with ourselves and all the visitors who have
donated school equipment to make our community projects
successful.
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