Location – Cusco, Peru
The Project – Picaflor House is an educational charity working in a small town in a rural area 25km outside of Cusco, Peru. The charity offers a comprehensive afterschool programme in academic and non-academic subjects, along with helping the children with their homework, which takes the burden off the parents. Picaflor House also offers a heavily subsidised healthy lunch to all the children who attend.
Picaflor also supports the local community through hygiene programmes, taps for teeth washing and stoves for local families, having a far- reaching positive impact on the wider community. Picaflor has developed, with its parent organisation, a child protection learning module that is being used at Picaflor and is ready to be implemented in schools in Peru, too.
Picaflor works directly with the community to identify their needs and help them to become stakeholders in proposed solutions. This holistic and communicative approach has strengthened the community as a whole and greatly improved the educational and vocational opportunities of the children involved.
Our support – In 2016 The LATA Foundation began helping to update Picaflor House’s English Teaching resources and financing an English speaking intern to help implement a new English teaching plan. The English teaching programme is core to Picaflor’s strategy as it one of the key skills needed by students in their state education and in the employment market.
LATA Foundation funding went towards important class work material such as graded textbooks, work books for students and teachers’ resources as well as Audio CDs. The Foundation support continued into 2019 with the funding of the English language Co-ordinator as part of the on-going teaching programme. Since, then, the LATA Foundation has gone on similarly to support Picaflor’s literacy programme, which is taught to all primary-aged children by a locally-employed teacher.
Most recently the LATA Foundation has supported a mobile library, taking books, teachers, and other learning resources to help children aged between 5 and 14, to re-engage with education. The library visits three rural villages every week to offer educational support sessions.
How can you help? – Donate £40 to provide 1 month of art supplies for 50 children: Donate here
Further Information – Being so close to Cusco, Picalfor is working with several local tour operators to ensure some of the benefits of tourism reach the surrounding areas. It also recruits local volunteers such as students from Cusco, as well as international ones though its parent organisation, Globalteer.
www.globalteer.org/
A former pupil, who left Picaflor to attend secondary school, has won a great achievement in English at a regional level. José (not his real name) attended Picaflor House for many years and is a very bright and studious boy who was keen to learn English. As such, José took advantage of teacher Lynn’s instruction in the classroom and advanced well.
José took part in an English competition at his school (the local state school of Oropesa) and won. He then went on to represent the school at regional level, competing against winners from all of the state schools in the Cusco region. José won again, beating all his fellow students and was commended on his excellent pronunciation. His mother visited Picaflor House (where her two younger children still attend) to thank everyone for providing him with the tools with which to learn English.
This is a wonderful achievement for José and indeed a testament to the English teaching and facilities of Picaflor House, facilitated by the financial support and interest of The LATA Foundation.