thursday, while walking around and exploring new parts of the community i haven’t wandered through yet, i walked by the “desarollo humano” (“human development”) building. i then resolved to return tomorrow, when it was open to learn about it. when i arrived this morning, the women were surprised to see me. and as it turns out, the office building is for tucume’s headquarters for vaso de leche.
vaso de leche is a program that works at providing families in poverty, nutritious food for the kids as well as provide a few other services. this one in particular provides a free daycare service for mom’s who need to work. the head office coordinates with the 55 vaso de leche posts in tucume, with each post serving more than 100 children (all under the age of 9). as i was learning more about it, i learned that most mothers are “young mothers,” still in their adolescence, and as their family grows, they continue in the program. on average, the mothers are 18-20 years old, with many more that are 16, and some mothers as young as 14.
this connection, was a great insight into opportunity in my community, as well as a way to see how i can help the organization possibly expand or provide additional services for it’s young mothers (i.e. nutritional or work-skill developing classes).
the kids w/ their snacks.
the head of the organization in my community, karla, was anxious to start introducing me to a post. she has offered to take me to all of the caserios to see the posts out there as well. once i have bike, it will be much easier to visit the caserios as well. today, we went to a local one in tucume, where they provided a free afternoon snack (a porridge-type drink and a roll w/ butter) to kids. all-in-all about 15 kids showed up.
these two kids were too cute. the one of the right was wearing mismatching shoes (both being meant for the right foot), and the two had not had a bath in at least a week…but still cute nonetheless.
perusing peru... 