As we launched this project recently I thought it was about time to write a blog post about the community of Tucsa. And not only the community but, more specifically, their children. As I have traveled through countless communities here in Peru and Bolivia, after a while you start to realize how factors like climate, […]
I won’t deny that in this past week, I had a very hard time making the routine 1.5 hour hike up to our nutrition project in Marccuray. Usually I enjoy this hike quite a bit because the scenes are just beautiful. But this time I had an extra burden to carry up the steep hill: […]
We have worked 3 years to get the Patacancha school lunch program/trout farm to a point of self-sufficiency. It hasn’t been without its challenges: equipment failure, fish dying, community issues (families without children in the school being jealous of those with kids in the school and benefiting from the program etc, etc, etc) but ultimately […]
I got an early Christmas present last week as I witnessed for the first time of my life a true NATURAL LLAMA BIRTH, in the middle of my trip to our new project in Tucsa. It is summer down here in he Andes, although saying that just does not feel right because most days it […]
The Patabamba Academy Closeout. By Yannick Wende, Program Director And once again, time just flew by! I had barely realized how quick time went by and that we were already at the time in the year, where a project ends. In this case it was a bittersweet feeling to come to the day where this […]
Trout Farm Managers Birthday. It is not a common thing to go to a community and spend a birthday ceremony like the typical western birthday ceremonies that we so kindly prepare for our loved ones every time there is this special date around. Andean birthdays are celebrated in a much smaller scale, especially in economically […]
AVELINO HUAMAN POMA , Avelino is a 6 year old Patacancha native, over many times that I have visited Patacancha, I have seen him wandering around the trout farm, quiet but happy, just watching how the trout move and swim. I have spoken with him on some occasions, and asked him, what do you want […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director Last week was a one of the most meaningful weeks in the Marccuray Nutrition program, as the very anticipated date of the arrival and delivery of the animals was finally about to happen. It took long months of hiking up and down the steep hillside to go and check how […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director Last week I had the strongest epiphany at work thus far in my working experience with the Alma Foundation. There I was on one of my usual visits to our project in Marccuray, it was late afternoon and time for me to head back down the one hour hike to […]
October 2013 For the fourth consecutive year, a group of Alma supporters visited the Alma projects in Peru. Read More >>
By Alan Harman The expression “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, feed him for life” is one of the many well-worn axioms of development that seems a little ridiculous in the Andean communities where we work. When we have determined that nutrition is a factor […]
By Alan Harman Ian McGroarty was our program director in Peru and only employee for the past 2 years. During that time he traveled 1,000s of kilometers on his motorbike and on foot to remote communities in and around the sacred valley. He spent countless nights sleeping on peoples’ floors, eating and drinking with them, […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director This last week had started off with some peculiarly odd weather for winter time here in the Andes. It is common to see the skies in winter here filled with sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. This winter however has had some really frequent cloudy days and not […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director Sihua is one of the projects I often go to and find a lot of different stories of students at the primary school, most of them come from very poor families in which children are often found in physically and mentally unhealthy situations. The thought of this plus the usual […]
By Julia Vanderham Co-Founder, Kiya Survivors Marina is a girl from Yanahura, between Urubamba and Ollantaytambo. She lives with her parents and two siblings in a small house. The family is in extreme poverty because the father is an alcoholic and he does not work to support his family. Because the youngest sibling is only […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director Last week my regular community visits had a little bit of an extra difficulty and danger added to the sum. I was on my way to Marccuray, to go and visit the community to see how the Cuy (guinea pigs) and chicken cages were at, for the nutrition program that […]
By Yannick Wende, Program Director Last week I was up in Patacancha to witness a key event in the evolution of our Patacancha Trout Farm Nutrition Project. A key step in making the project self-sustaining was for the community to make their own trout food (rather than us buying it and transporting it up to […]
By Ian McGroarty, Program Director In early February 2012, Leo was introduced to me after he had already been elected by the community to be Alma’s Trout Farm Administrator. The first of the two main impressions I had of him after that meeting was that he was shy. Shyness is common in indigenous Andean people. […]
The paradox of progress is that sometimes, to move forward, you must first take a couple of steps backwards and then rebuild from there. In a small Andean community called Sihua, that is literally what is happening. The Alma Foundation began its Sihua Primary School Expansion Project in 2012, with the goal of expanding the […]
The Peruvian Andes are home to some of the South America’s largest glaciers, sitting majestically on the high mountain peaks the Incas once worshiped and indigenous Andean peoples still pay homage to. Unfortunately, climate change has taken a toll. Elder community members point to black rocky peaks and speak with nostalgia of when they were […]