Working in Cusco for the kids

It has been quite a long time since we last time wewrote here - it is mostly due to the fact that we had lots to do with the schools - a lame excuse I would say but nevertheless true.

Things change very quickly even in charity organizations which in theory should be operating in much more stable environment than private enterprises. Somehow this is not the case. Perhaps it was only last week and a change that could be associated with the rainy season seems to have arrived in Cusco. Actually it feels more like hailing seasons as half of the time it hails instead of raining. It is also even colder than it used to be - brrr....

To start with we had some great success in fund raising on all fronts. As mentioned earlier we are working on a culinary event in one of the most fancy places in Cusco - Club Cusco. It is actually only members club which lets us organize the event in their premises for free. Our Peruvian chef and his friends will work for free doing all the cooking etc. There is also going to be Peruvian handicraft, our photo exhibition and salsa dancing. You can see the plan of the event here - unfortunately only in Spanish.

All the proceeds from the event are going directly to our organization. Last week mostly due to Rita with her excellent Spanish we have managed to secure 10 sponsors for the event (pubs, restaurants etc.) Since we had two days in which we could not even get a single sponsor sign up we were kind of totally shocked that we managed to secure 3 within two hours. As the last sponsor was a dance club and they did sign up and pay at 11pm we ended up having a party and dancing till 1.30am. It was a great relief and great fun. Though next morning at seven I was supposed to go with our cook to the market to buy food for next week. It is quite an expedition because you actually need a donkey to carry all the vegetables etc. back home.

Now we just need to print and sell 80 tickets but we are quite optimistic. In addition thanks to our efforts now we get everyday excellent food for free from La Retama restaurant for the kids and we have an agreement to bring our kids for arts classes to one of the local museums. Rita's Spanish is by now incredible!!! Hard to believe that she made such huge progress.

One unexpected result of the tours around the city is the fact that we have managed to find lovely restaurants and cafe's and additionally got to know their quite eccentric owners - perhaps also some underground Cusco :)) There is hardly any night club, pub or restaurant in the center of Cusco we have not been to so walking around means you stop every 5 minutes to greet someone and pretend that you are best friends :)

In addition or perhaps first of all we have received lots of money through our online donation page - in total 3230USD!!! (excluding the culinary event)...VERY BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE DONORS!!! We have no words to express our gratitude to everyone...We will be back with pictures and reports of how the money was used to support the kids.

Considering the current successes in fund raising this week we finally intend to introduce books to the kids - it is a bit more complicated as it sounds because our kids are not on the same level (not to mention age). Therefore each school will need at least three different books which we are actually compiling on our own.

In addition we are overhauling how the classes are led to increase the effective time that kids learn (in a more structured way) and to teach them a bit of discipline.

On the negative side we are missing teachers for our schools. Two of our teachers have quit and we are in the process of finding new ones. For the time being we have managed to find temporary solutions but we need to have a more permanent setup. Rita has talked to the director of two collages specializing in preparing people to become teachers and we had some applicants from them but so far did not manage to get anybody to fill in our vacancies. Keep your fingers crossed for this week. This is critical but also a great opportunity for us to improve the quality of education our kids get. It is though a very strange process - the candidates come - we agree on conditions and then next day they do not show up at all - or alternatively they show up and next day they say that actually the time of the classes does not suit them. Why they have not mentioned it earlier is kind of strange since we made it clear when the classes start. Weird??!!

Another problem that we are facing is lack of volunteers. It would be much easier to run the show if we had more people. Unfortunately this week there will be only three of us. Next week another volunteer will arrive to us from Belgium but in October we will be down to two people. This is quite worrisome. So far we have not been too successful with our fliers so we will change our campaign a bit - from more subdued to playing more on feelings - lets see whether this will play out better and we have more suitable people knocking on our door. On the other hand we are going to tackle this problem by trying to partner with agencies which specialize in recruiting volunteers (we know from other centers that it can do miracles). With those two new initiatives we hope to get more people to help us.

Therefore after all this stress I come back home and train the rabbit...and in addition we have made a small dinner for eight people on Saturday evening with Hungarian Goulash (I guess Gulyás à la Pecs) which tasted to like real Hungarian goulash - all our respects to Rita!!!