Cusco Cares

Yesterday we moved to Los Niños Hotel.  Making hotel plans on the fly is becoming more and more challenging in June, the start of high season here.  Los Niños has two locations and we had been to both in our efforts to find decent, affordable, post-homestay accommodations.  We noticed a sign advertising a tour of their child aid project but at the time we didn't understand the connection with the hotel.  Now as we settle in and learn more about Los Niños, we are pleased to have stumbled upon it. All of the proceeds from the two hotels and the cafes go to support the Niños Foundation.  There aren't any opportunities to do volunteer work with Los Niños but at least the money that we would be spending for food and lodging anyway is supporting a good cause.  So as we continue to look for a sound organization where we can contribute in a meaningful way, we can at least feel good about providing support to this NGO.

Brook: This evening we did a tour of our hotel’s “child aid” project.  The tour was really long and in really fast Spanish that was hard to understand but overall the organization is very interesting.

Niños, the project, was founded by a woman named Jolanda van den Berg from Holland, who is trying to help the street children in and around Cusco.  She is now helping to feed 600 kids ages six to twelve in Cusco.  Jolanda runs two Niños hotels that help fund the project, one of which we are staying in. The children helped by the project are fed two meals a day, either breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner.  They eat in a replica of the restaurants at the hotels.  These kids are also helped with schoolwork and taught good hygiene and manners in public spaces and at home.  The public schools in Peru are only half day so these kids get extra school in the rest of their time.  Jolanda has also built a miniature movie theater for them, the only one in Cusco.  They have developed a point system where if they get enough points from reading books, using good table manners or doing very well in school, the kids can use them to get popcorn during a movie and things like that.  The organization does not accept any volunteers.  They prefer to employ local people.
- Brook