Bruce Organization
Annual Report 2004
SUMMARY:
Children’s Centres – This year we opened 9 new Children’s Centres in Latn America:
Provencia de Ancash (1 centre) – In June we took
over a hostal in the centre of Huaraz, at Damazo Altunez 782; and installed
one of our best children’s centres. During 2004 it served perhaps *200
children. It has proven to be one of our finest children’s centres. Web
Page: Huaraz
Provencia de Cajamarca
(1 centre)- First we opened a centre at Jr Tarapaca 580. It served
over *300 very poor children over the course of the year, during which
time we trained a team of dedicated volunteers who want to have careers
in this work: and at the end of the year we turned the centre over to
them – with the agreement that they continue the same project in which
we trained them. By the end of the year we had agreed to move our headquarters
into the Children’s Centre of the Hijas de Caridad de San Vicente de Paul,
at Urrelo 888, where the facilities are 10 times larger than our original
Centre and we can receive and help many more poor children. Web Page:
Cajamarca
Provencia de Cuzco (3 centres) - We opened the long awaited Cusco Centre near the Plaza de Armas, then quickly opened two satellite centres: one in San Sebastian and the other in Santiago. These centres were opened at the end of 2004, so it is too early to say how many children they will have served. Web Pages: Cusco, San Sebastian, Santiago.
Provencia de La Libertad (4 centres) – We opened a second centre in the city of Trujillo, in San Andres (which we later closed). We opened a centre in the Alcaldia of Malabrigo (Puerto Chicama). We opened a centre in the Alcaldia of Cero Pisqueda. We opened a centre in the community centre at Las Palmeras (Esperanza). In La Libertad we served more than *600 children during 2004. (We also laid the ground work for a centre at the Alcaldia of Delicias, which will open in early January 2005). Web Pages: Trujillo, Puerto Chicama, Cero Pesqueda, Las Palmeras, Las Delicias.* This is not meant to imply that at any time the total number of children listed were being served by our centres (our centres normally have between 20 and 50 children each at any given time), these numbers are an approximation of the amount of children who came to our centres during the year and received some form of help.
Shelter for abandoned, pregnant adolescents – This year we continued
construction on the Delicias Shelter, and had completed approximately
30% of the facility by year’s end. Web Page: Child
Mothers
Work with drug addicted street children – We co-operated with David Miller in the conception, planning and development of an enclosed rehabilitation centre for drug addicted street children. Located in Salavery; (on the same property with Hogar de Esperanza) it was constructed during the year. Our founder now serves as a director of the facility: "El Rancho de Esperanza".
International volunteers – During the year we received 102 international volunteers from 22 countries.
Language Academies for poor people. We opened new language academies in Cajamarca and Huaraz Web Page: Language Academies.
Panama and Ecuador – We sent representatives to these countries to co-operate with existing children’s projects and to look into the possibility of opening our own centres there, but we decided against opening in these countries in 2004.
Month by month:
January 2004 – We begn the year in our original Children’s Centre at 325 Independencia, Trujillo, where we recruited , fed, medicated, clothed and educated very poor children from the streets and barrios of Trujillo. This month we began preparing a leadership team from among our international volunteers and recruited additional social assistants in preparation for opening new children’s centres. We sent representatives to Panama, Ecuador and Cajamarca; to look into the possibilities of opening an additional centre in one of these places. We also reorganised our Trujillo language academy to make it easier to duplicate it in whichever city we decided to open our next centre. We continued construction on the We opened negotiations with the Alcaldia of Malabrigo (Puerto Chicama – an hour north of Trujillo) to eventually open a children’s centre in that small city. Delicias Project.
February 2004 – While continuing our work at Trujillo, we decided to open our next centre in Cajamarca, and we rented a suitable property not far from the Plaza de Armas. We spent the month preparing the volunteers and social worker we would send to Cajamarca, and buying and repairing furniture, gathering all the materials required to open a new children’s centre and language academy. We also sent volunteers to mke contact with city, church and social organisations in Cajamarca, and began recruiting our first children for the new centre. We continued construction on the Delicias Project.
March 2004 – We opened the Cajamarca centre, and continued all our programs and projects in Trujillo. We decided to convert our main Internet web site from Spanish to English, and redirected our main web effort to www.bruceperu.org (in English), while continuing our Spanish web site at www.bruceperu.com. We continued construction on the Delicias Project.
April 2004 – We paid the registration fees, bought uniforms and entered all the children into national schools all the children we had been preparing in the Trujillo centre over the past year. In Cajamarca our poor and at-risk child population rose to over 30 children, and we managed to recruit a number of good local volunteers and employees, including teachers, cook, cleaner/security man. We also held the official dedication of the centre with the help of a popular local priest and the mother superior of the Hijas de Caridad de San Vicente de Paul. We continued construction work on the Delicias Shelter.
May 2004 – We prepared a team of our more experienced volunteers to open our third Children’s Centre, in the city of Huaraz, and we began preparing to open a new centre in Trujillo (our reason for the latter was that we were not certain how much longer the Beneficencia would permit us to hold on to our main centre on Jr. Independencia. The new president of the Beneficencia had been trying to recover this property since the day we completed our renovation work on it – when we entered the property under the terms of a convenio with the Beneficiencia, the property was in a state of ruin; and we invested had invested over S/100,000 to renovate it on the understanding that we would have the use of it for our programs for five years: until the spring of 2006). We continued our normal programs at the Jr. Independencia centre, and continued construction on the Delicias shelter.
June 2005 – We rented an entire hostal in Huaraz, quickly converted it to serve as a children’s centre, and began recruiting children and local volunteers. By the month’s end we had 20 children, social worker, local teachers and a full complement of international volunteers in the new Huaraz Centre. We sent new volunteers to Cajamarca, and continued the programs at Trujillo. At the end of June we suspended construction on the Delicias shelter until a new supervisor could be recruited – the two primary considerations in taking this decision were that our founder was about to have to go to Buenos Aires for a serious operation and could be away from Trujillo for up to two months, also, our entire perimeter security fence was stolen one week end along with many tools and bricks: and the local construction workers were implicated in this.
July 2004 – We rented a large house in San Andreas Urbanization, Trujillo, converted it into a children’s centre and moved most of our children’s activities from the Jr.Independencia facility to the new Trujillo centre. Our founder and President went to Buenos Aires, both for medical reasons and also to further long standing preparations for eventually opening our largest centre, one day, in Buenos Aires. During this time our programs in Trujillo progressed at the new centre, the children’s centres at Cajamarca and Huaraz continued to take in more children; and volunteers went to Cusco to continue our preparations for opening a children’s centre there.
August 2004 – In Buenos Aires preparations moved slowly forward toward our eventual opening of a Children’s Centre there. The new Trujillo centre was well organized and run ba a team of talented volunteer directors and professional volunteers. However, two unexpected events in Trujillo made it inevitable that we would have to close the new centre, and be able to return to our original (much larger) facility on Jr Independencia: 1 – The octagenarian owner of the house we had rented in San Andres returned to Trujillo, discovered that his daughter had rented his house to be used as a centre to help very poor children; and renounced our rental contract. 2 – The court in Trujillo made a favourable ruling in our case to retain possession of the property on Jr. Independencia, assuring that we could remain there for at least another year: at least until the middle of 2005. For these reasons we began to prepare to vacate the new Trujillo centre and re-occupy the Jr. Independencia property with our Trujillo programs. Our centres in Cajamarca and Huaraz continued well: we sent new volunteers to each; and more volunteers visited Cusco to continue to prepare for our opening of a Children’s Centre in that city.
September 2004 – Our founder and President returned from Buenos Aires and we opened the long planed children’s centre in Malabrigo (Puerto Chicama). In Trujillo we closed the San Andres centre and returned to the Jr. Independencia property. Our preparations advanced in Cusco, and Cajamarca and Huaraz continued to move forward. We agreed with a group of volunteers who had been connected with the Cajamarca centre to turn over the centre to them by the end of the year, in order to help them form their own NGO and advance their careers in children’s social work – this was done with assurances from the volunteers that they would continue to serve the children already pertailing to the Cajamarca centre, and continue the project as it had been designed by our founder. We made preparations to join our Cajamarca work for very poor children with that of the Hijas de Caridad de San Vicente de Paul, who have a much larger facility than we were turning over to our volunteers, and were in the process of converting their mission to that of working exclusively to help very poor children and street children in the Cajamarca area. In Trujillo we began to make preparations to open a satellite childrens centre in one of the poorest and most dangerous barrios, where reside a large number of extremely poor children in a state or abuse and abandonment: who do not attend school: Cero Pesqueda.
October 2004 – With co-operation of the Alcaldi of Cero Pesqueda, our friends there and a number of community leaders, we opened a children’s centre in Cero Pesqueda and began recruiting children. We soon had more children than we could handle, and we increased our staff at the Cero Pesqueda Centre by recruiting local volunteers and sending out more of our international volunteers to work with the children and their mothers. Seeing that this project was an instant success for children we had been unable to reach from our Trujillo city centre facility, we made plans to decentralize our children’s program in Trujillo; and began to look for more opportunities to open satellite children’s centres in the poorest communities surrounding Trujillo. Cajamarca and Huaraz continued as usual; and our plans to open a centre in Cusco continued to advance.
November 2004 – With the help of our local staff we located an extremely poor community at the very edge of Trujillo, in Alta Esperanza; ‘Las Palmeras’, where – like Cero Pesqueda – many of the children are not able to attend school. We brought 51 of the leading mothers of this community to our centre in Trujillo and made a proposal to them: Ïf they would agree to co-operate with us in keeping their children from working instead of attending school: we would do all we could to help prepare their children (including teaching, feeding, clothing and medicating the children): and pay to enrol them in national schools as soon as they ware ready. The mothers agreed, and we signed a contract with them. Our projects in Cero Pesqueda, Cajamarca, Huaraz and Trujillo central continued as usual. Preparations to open our centre in Cusco began to move more quickly, with the intention of opening our centre there in December.
December 2004 – We opened a satellite children’s centre in Las Palmeras, Esperanza, Trujillo and began recruiting children and local volunteers for the project. We turned over our original Cajamarca centre to volunteers with whom we had agreed so to do. We opened our Cusco centre and immediately opened two satellite children's centres in the Cusco barrios. Our centres in Las Palmeras, Cero Pesqueda and Huaraz continued to flourish. We named a new director of our work in Cajamarca and our preparations to move our Cajamarca staff in with the Hijas de Caridad moved ahead. Our centre in Malabrigo was put on stand-by until the Alcaldia could complete some of the obligations they had undertaken to accomplish as part of our agreement to open our children’s centre in their city. Our original program in the main centre at Trujillo continued as usual. We reached an agreement with the Alcaldi of Las Delicias to open our next satellite children’s centre in their community, and we began making preparations to open same. We also made preparations to re-commence construction of the Delicias shelter as soon as the new construction supervisor arrived in the middle of January 2005.
Plans for 2005
In the coming year we will quickly open our satellite children’s centre in the Alcaldia of Las Delicias (in January 2005), and we plan to open four more satellite children’s centres in the poorest communities in the Trujillo area. We will begin recruiting very poor pregnant adolescents in January, and offer them a program in our Trujillo centre which will include their physical health, Psychological help, social assistance for them and for with their families, as well as offer education, tailleries for making clothes for their coming babies, training on how to be a good mother; and training and assistance in making products which can be sold in order for the young mothers-to-be to become self sufficient – we will also help market their products. We will continue construction on the Delicias shelter, and hope to have it ready to use by the early summer of 2005. We will continue to open satellite centres in Cusco, and will continue the Huaraz centre as it is. In April we will register and buy uniforms for all our children form all our children’s centres: who are ready to enter national schools. By the middle of 2005 we will have to acquire a large property in the centre of Trujillo, and transfer our Trujillo headquarters and projects to this new facility: returning the Jr. Independencia property to the Beneficencia. Our principal objective for the year 2005 will be to open a large centre in Buenos Aires, move our national headquarters there, and open our first four Buenos Aires satellite children’s centres in barrios of the Capital (our research indicates that in order to eventually reach all the at-risk children in Lima & Buenos Aires who are not attending school, we will have to open as many as 100 satellite children’s centres in Lima & Buenos Aires barrios). We want to improve the services of our "HACHAMAMA" program for the poor single mothers of street children - including opening a microfinancing facility and entrepreneurship training. We expect to recruit 120 interntional volunteers in the year 2005.
Our estimated financial requirements for 2005 – Our operating cost (prior to opening the Lima & Buenos Aires centres) is expected to be S/30,000 per month. Be believe we can cover this amount by the following means: contributions from the students of our Trujillo, Huaraz and Cusco language academies; contributions from incoming international volunteers and the public, and contributions from our founder.
We calculate that it will cost S/160,000 to open the Lima & Buenos Aires centres and carry them until they become self sustaining (through student and volunteer contributions). We are in the process of asking international foundations, friends and family members to grant this amount of money.