Peace and Environment News* October 1998
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Peace and Environment News * October 1998 |
by Rosalind Riseborough
To Canadians whose homes are surrounded by greenery, the huge slums of Lima look like a war zone, a city under the constant siege of poverty. But beneath the visual hell, there are people who live in hope. Together, they look beyond their poverty and struggle to build something as a community.
This past July, nine Canadians spent two weeks in Peru. The visit was organized by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace and one of its Peruvian development partners, the Episcopal Social Action Committee. The group included six people from Ottawa, and one each from Toronto, Timmins and St-Boniface in Manitoba.
One of the organizations the Canadian group visited was the Federation of Community Kitchens in Lima. The first community kitchen was started twenty years ago, set up and run by women to help feed their families. In 1990-91, there were around 3000 community kitchens, some of them funded by the government to help the people cope with the effects of the Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by President Fujimori and the International Monetary Fund. Today, after most government help was withdrawn, over 1500 of the original self-financed community kitchens remain in Lima.
The community kitchens operate in a spirit of mutual self-help and solidarity. Women pay a very small fee to join the kitchen, and take turns buying, cooking and feeding member families. Pooling their limited resources means, for instance, that a family can eat one three-course meal a day. Without the kitchen, a family would only be able to afford a meagre one-course meal.
Women who participate in the community kitchens gain more than just a solid meal. The Federation provides leadership training courses for the women, information about health care, training in establishing micro-enterprises to generate additional family income, help and advice in obtaining credit. Women are disadvantaged in the education system in Peru, so these informal training workshops help them to take their places economically, socially and politically. Through the collective kitchens the women of Peru are able to live by important community values: solidarity, collectivity, respect, and autonomy.
Peru's struggle with international debt, internal unemployment, and poverty is also seen in the plight of the estimated 1.5 million children who work, often in dangerous conditions, to help support their families. The national institute for the well-being of the family (INABIF) and a national group on children's rights run programs to help at least some of these children make it through school and spend a few hours a day in the pursuits of childhood.
Our tour group visited one program aimed at about 54 children between the ages of 7 and 17 who work at breaking up bedrock for construction. The children, nicknamed the "Flintstones," spend hours burning old tires to heat up and "soften" the rock, plying crowbars and sledge hammers to break up the rock into small pieces, and loading the rocks onto trucks. Rather than attending school, the children work at these treacherous and back-breaking jobs because their parents do not earn enough to feed the family.
The program centres around a small community centre housing a micro-enterprise for mothers. While their mothers work at the centre, the rock-picking children play nearby, celebrate birthdays, do their homework, and receive help from psychologists and educators. Before the program started, many working teenagers of 15 or 16 had only reached the Grade 5 level in school. Working with the families and the community, the program helps the children get a better education, keeps them out of dangerous working conditions, and gives them a chance to improve their future.
Rosalind Riseborough is President of the Ottawa Diocesan Council for Development and Peace. She was part of the delegation visiting Peru.
Converted July 31, 1999 - Lg
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