With Samusocial Peru:

USD 10,500  Earthquake relief in Pisco
USD   2,100  Gasoline costs for the Ambulance bought prior year
USD      700  Program to Fight against Tuberculosis in Huaycan
USD   8,000  Construction: 3 new class rooms in Huaycan high school

In August, a devastating earthquake hit the Ica-Pisco region. The next day Samusocial Peru requested our financial support to help send a team of firemen to help. We sent them what we had (USD 3,000) and we immediately issued a call for donations. We raised a bit more than USD 10,000 in a few days.
Read the mission report here.

In 2006 we financed the purchase of Samusocial Peru second ambulance (see 2006 projects). We thought it would be nice to continue being involved this year, so we decided that we would cover the year's cost of gasoline and of medicine supplies of the ambulance. This amounted to USD 2,100
We also continued our support to the program to fight against Tuberculosis in Huaycan. The surprise was that the original USD 7,000 (disbursed at the very end of 2006) lasted almost the whole year, instead of the originally planned first 6 months of 2007. We just had to make a USD 700 adjustment to cover the whole year.

In November/December we started working on a project of constructing a new building for the Gustavo Mohme Unidad Educativa (high-school - primary & secondary) in Huaycan, near Lima. The new building would bring 3 brand new class rooms to the children. The parents helped by working (as volunteers) on the foundations of the building. The execution of the project was in the hands of our partners, Samusocial Peru. We sent the money (USD 8,000) in December 2007 and works started immediately.
The building was inaugurated in March 08.

 

With Medical Missions For Children (MMFC):

USD 31,000  Cuzco mission, providing free surgeries (cleft lips & palates) to poor kids

MMFC started going to Peru in 2003 with a team of surgeons performing cleft lip and palate repair at the Cuzco Regional Hospital. There is a lot of poverty in Cuzco and there are many cleft patients that are left untreated. Since then they went every year.

After meeting with the board of directors of MMFC and their management, we decided to go ahead and finance their next MMFC's Peru mission in October 2007.

Every mission involves 25-30 team members (surgeons, pediatricians, dentists, nurses, etc...), 90/110 patients screened, 50/65 surgeries (cleft lips & palates, cleft lip rhinoplasties, pharyngeal flaps, as well as microtias...) are performed and the dental team typically treats 65/80 patients and around 100 procedures are executed. 

The mission's cost was USD 31,000 (thirty one thousand dollars). This money was spent in airfare to bring the team to from the US to Cuzco and in very reasonable lodging/food for the team in Cuzco. The team members are all volunteers. They are doing this on their vacation time and they do not take any financial compensation.

Learn more about MMFC and the Cuzco mission here.