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 […]
Sariry Update – February 2013 The 2012 project evaluation is wrapping up and the Alma Foundation has begun the planning process for the new 2013 partner project with the Sariry Foundation in Viacha, Bolivia. In 2012, Alma paid for a Sariry educator who worked with 73 children and 25 parents on pedagogic and cultural programs […]
Sihua Update – February 2013 Though the final evaluation is still being completed, it appears that last year’s Primary School Expansion project in Sihua was a success and planning has begun for the 2013 school year beginning in March. In 2012, the Alma Foundation signed a three-way contract with the Unidad de Gestion Educativa Local […]
Patabamba February 2013 Update 2013 will be an important year for the Patabamba Pre-University Academy. This year, the Alma Foundation will not contract teachers and curriculums from outside institutions, but will directly hire and implement the academy in coordination with the Patabamba Parents’ Association and its elected Patabamba Academy Committee. As decided in various meetings […]
Following on the success of Chamana project, Alma begins work in Markuray. February 2013 – Read More
The primary and secondary school students of I.E. 50190 in the community of Patabamba rarely used to talk about continuing to study in university or the possibility of entering professional careers. Those who finished secondary school either continued to work in the community’s potato fields or are left to look for unstable employment in construction […]
January 2013 – Read More Nutritional and Educational Improvement in Patacancha Primary School 50618 – Trout Farm Project Purpose: The trout farm project in Patacancha aims to improve the academic potential and performance of the 134 primary school students through the eradication of chronic malnutrition among the student population. In order to do so, […]
In keeping with the season I have been thinking a lot about what we did in 2012 and what we should be doing in 2013. We ran considerably more projects and programs last year than we set out to last January and I need to thank our program directors Louise and Ian for keeping on […]
ScotiaMcLeod Employees Visit Alma Projects in Peru and Bolivia On October 10, for the third consecutive year, a group of Alma supporters (and two of their children) travelled at their own expense to Peru and Bolivia to visit our projects. The following is a very brief summary of their trip. See the “Projects” page of […]