Staff Spotlight: Heather Crouch

She started at SKIP as an Economic Development volunteer and later stayed as a Volunteer Leader and Assistant Teacher. After a brief period of travel, she returned to SKIP as the Volunteer Coordinator, overseeing the recruitment, training and support of volunteers.

My favorite travel memory comes from my month spent in Brazil. I had been traveling around South America in low season, so I hadn't met many other travelers and was just doing my own thing, but I connected with a girl who was staying at my same hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We only overlapped there for one night and had planned to go different directions.

After a week apart, it turned out her travel plans changed and she decided to go to Brazil, which was my next stop as well. We connected via Facebook and decided to meet up and travel for a month together in Brazil. We instantly became great travel companions and had all kinds of adventures together. I loved the sites and rhythms of Brazil, but what made it so special was the company and having someone to enjoy all of those things with.

It's been such an amazing journey for me here at SKIP. I originally planned to come as a short term volunteer, but fell in love with the organization and the work that it is doing here in Peru. I slowly have taken on more leadership in the organization and have learned a lot along the way!

One of the biggest things I have been learning here is cross cultural communication and how to work with people from a variety of different backgrounds. We have a really international team and it has been a great learning opportunity for me to work with such a diverse group of people.

I absolutely love hearing stories of volunteers returning home and then continuing to promote SKIP because they had such a great experience here. Some of our volunteers return home and have fundraisers or represent SKIP and volunteer fairs at their universities. It is fun to see it come full circle and receive a volunteer application that says they heard about it from a previous volunteer.

Our programs are all located in Trujillo, Peru in one location. However, we have a lot of different programs such as art, sport, psychology, economic development, library, english teaching and skatepark. I have had the pleasure of working in all of those areas during my time here (except for skatepark, I have some work to do on my skate boarding skills!). That is one of the great things about our program is that you can get involved in multiple areas at the same time.

The unique thing about our program is that we work with a small community of 200 families, but we work very intensely with those families, working to help them improve in all areas of their lives. It is great to really get to know the kids, their siblings, their cousins and their parents, who all come in and are part of the program on a daily basis.

I was especially proud of my team on Childrens Day this year. We planned a big celebration for the kids and their parents - decorating the community center and doing all sorts of games and competitions. Everyone had a great time and it was great to see the whole team there working together.

The biggest factors for me are communication and organization. These aren't two things that Peru is necessarily known for, but I am so proud of my team for the well run programs that we have. We have a lot of systems in place to make sure that we always start on time and don't have to cancel classes, including people on sick cover shifts and coordinators able to fill in as needed.