I found another new organization that I met with yesterday! They are so awesome I think I’m going to send all the new volunteers there. I’ve been having trouble wrapping my head around what exactly they do, however, because they do everything! Everything from child nutrition to microfinance to tuberculosis testing to environmental protection to local governance. And they work in partnership with Hunt Oil who made it to my blog last month.
PRIMSA works all over the country but right now I’m looking for new placements in Lima, so we’re going to work together on a few projects:
This project is designed to help kids in school get healthy exercise as well as good nutrition. They work in a part of Lima called Los Olivos, which is an area traditionally of low income but has really come a long way in the past decade. Sadly, in Peru (like everywhere) junk food is really cheap – especially pop, which is usually cheaper and/or cleaner than water. EducANIMADO is a program designed to make nutrition and healthy food fun, and volunteers can help with lesson plans and implementation.
Apparently the current sort of test they do to determine if someone has TB is a rather slow process, so PRIMSA is doing research to develop faster tests so they can start treatment to patients faster! They also do some other stuff for tuberculosis patients, doing home and sanitation improvements and helping provide job training and improve nutrition.
My favourite project that they do is microfinancing, or microloans, which are for amounts like $100 or so and help really poor people do something like buy a sewing machine so they can start a home business. This placement is all about researching to make loans more effective and stuff like that
Adventures in Peruvia 