Giving Peru's Working Kids A Second Chance
By Kai T. HillAt 15, Miguel Guerrero has the composure of someone well beyond his years. His dream, he says, is to become a police officer. Sitting next to him, his younger brother Hans sees himself becoming a systems engineer.
The Christian Cooperation for Development (COCID), a CRS partner in Peru, provides nearly 100 children a day with tutoring, school supplies, health education and mentoring. Photo by Jim Stipe/CRS
In the living room of their uncle's modest home in a hillside community of Moyobamba, Peru, both are smiley and confident, not hinting at the hurdles they've had to overcome.
Like many children throughout Peru, the boys started working long before they reached adolescence. If you ask about their father, their eyes lower in unison. "Years ago their father abandoned them," says their arm-crossed uncle Pedro, who became their surrogate father when their mother died of a heart condition more than a year ago.
A Dangerous Decision
In the remote, highland jungle area of Moyobamba, many children see their dreams extinguished by exhaustive work, extreme poverty and rigid home conditions. Whether at a tourist district in the capital, Lima, or at the central plaza in Moyobamba, children panhandle for spare change or peddle gum and candy from cardboard boxes. With sullen eyes some say they are hungry and offer to shine your shoes. These are Peru's so-called "street children."
A Morning at COCID
When a group from CRS pays a visit to COCID, a few dozen children are sitting in a classroom abuzz with curiosity, nearly bursting to tell their stories.
One beaming 12-year-old girl works in a market helping a woman sell lemonade and tortillas for two hours each day. Nehemias, 13, helps his mother twice weekly to sell gelatin cups. One of the youngest children, 7-year-old Segundo, said that he helps his mother sell fish. For these children, working is not a choice but rather a way of life.
The COCID center provides a pathway for them to stay in school, focus on their studies and learn new skills. "They get special training because most of these kids come from single-parent households. I'd say 80 percent of the homes are headed by single mothers," comments Lorena, adding, "The children grow up with very low self-esteem and problems with communication."
The program also lets them know that college and technical training are possibilities as opposed to non-skilled jobs. "We try to give them an opportunity to strengthen their skills so they can be women and men with better opportunities in the future," says Lorena.
She says at least 90 percent of the children now want to pursue a professional career. They also have the support of their parents, who are required to volunteer at the center as a means to support their children and understand the value of their education. One student at COCID, Anita Maria, recently won a national scholarship to one of Peru's well-known technical schools. The center is also in the process of trying to establish a scholarship fund.
"Some of these kids, like Anita, Miguel and Hans have a great deal of potential," Lorena says. "They just need an opportunity to be able to reach another level of life."
Each day, parents are confronted with a decision: send their children to school or have them work for money to supplement the family's income. School often becomes the lesser priority.
Miguel and Hans were on a similar path. That's until they came to the Christian Cooperation for Development, better known as the COCID center.
"The work that [the children] do is dangerous because they are exposed to abuse, mistreatment, sexual abuse and drug addiction," says the center's director, Lorena Garcia. "That's why COCID, with financing from CRS, implemented the program."
Funded by Catholic Relief Services and our donors, the five-year-old center in Moyobamba provides nearly 100 children between the ages of 7 and 17 with tutoring, two meals a day, school supplies, confidence-building activities, health education, mentoring and a family-like atmosphere. The older children also take part in candy- and yogurt-making workshops. The fun culinary experience actually has a larger purpose: it teaches them to market and sell food for a profit—skills that will benefit them long after they leave the program.
"The thing that is impressive about these kids is that they want to be a part of this project," explains Lorena. "They come on their own volition."
CRS has been helping working children and at-risk adolescents in Peru since 2003. In addition to Moyobamba, we have programs in Soritor, Nueva Cajamarca, Iquitos in the Amazon region, and Cuzco in the southern highlands.
A Rescue Mission
A tender-mannered Lorena spearheaded the Moyobamba program in 2002. She had a vision for helping these stray kids get on the right path. But what helped her get COCID off the ground was a generous Peruvian-American donor, Luisa Rios, who has helped fund the program since its existence.
A Peru native who made Rochester, New York, her home 36 years ago, Luisa says that she specifically sought to fund a program for working children. While she grew up privileged in Iquitos, Peru, her parents were working children. They didn't have the luxury of going to school.
Luisa visits the center several times a year and is very involved in its progress. "What they need is a little push and opportunity," says the retired teacher.
When he's not studying at the CRS-supported COCID center, 7-year-old Segundo Arando works by helping his mother sell fish. Photo by Jim Stipe/CRS
Like Luisa's father, Miguel says that he started working from the age of 10—mostly in people's gardens. Lorena met the family through Miguel and Hans' older brother, Manuel, who worked at the central plaza as a shoeshine boy. Manuel's fate took a different direction, as he later mixed with delinquents and drugs—a risk, says Lorena, for children working on the streets.
That's why Pedro said that he works extra hard to keep the brothers on the right path. The boys even revere his strict discipline.
"There are too many bad elements and I don't want that for them," says the 32-year-old, who knows the realities firsthand. He remembers selling popsicles and being a watchman on a farm to help his mother. "I felt alone, but I had to work. That's the way it is," he says dismissively.
Miguel and Hans walk 30 minutes from their home each school day to attend the center's morning session. They attend school in the afternoon.
"It's extremely significant to me, they provide us with assistance and support, and it's especially a help for my uncle," says Miguel, who is applying for college entrance with the help of COCID staff. He is also a peer ambassador to the younger students.
Kai T. Hill is an associate web producer. She works in the Baltimore headquarters and recently traveled with CRS to Peru.
