Getting Ready for Peru

I'm getting ready to go to Peru in about two weeks. I'll be volunteering with the Global Volunteers program in Lima. We'll be working at the Puericultorio Perez Aranibar (PPA) which is a large "Children's Home" that serves over 550 at-risk children ages birth to 17.

The PPA was started the late 1920's by a local philanthropist named Augusto Pèrez Aranìbar. Aranìbar was not wealthy himself, but noticed that there were an alarming number of street children in Peru. Having no children himself, the story goes, he resolved to “adopt” a family of hundreds. Over several years, he raised money from wealthy Peruvians and then purchased a giant tract of land and opened the PPA. Today, the PPA is overseen by the "Beneficencia" which is part of Peru’s Ministry of Family Welfare and Women’s Affairs.

Of the 540 children that live at the PPA, 10% are true orphans, meaning that one or both parents are known to be dead. 30% have been abandoned by their parents and 65% have been removed from their parents for abuse and/or neglect.

Peru is currently in the midst of it's summer, so I anticipate it will be quite hot while I'm there. I've been told that the children are in the middle of summer vacation, so some of the children will be gone from the PPA visiting family during the break from school. The children who remain will be in need of a lot of attention because they are the ones who do not have anyone to visit.

My volunteer group consists of 12 volunteers who are coming from all over the U.S. We will be staying at a hotel in Lima and going to the PPA each day to work with the children from about 8am to 7pm. We do have one free weekend, so I'm not sure what I'll be doing then.

As for now, I'm just trying to figure out how much stuff I can cram into the backpack my sister was nice enough to let me borrow. I'm not really the "roughing it" kind of girl, but I have to carry my own bag, so I'm really going to try to limit myself to taking only the bare essentials (and this doesn't include a hairdryer!!).