Volunteer and Help Moms and Children in Peru
- Peru
- Lima
About Program
Join Global Volunteers to help displaced children in Peru - for one to two weeks! Tragically, many impoverished children live on the streets of Lima and the outskirts-- abandoned, orphaned, or disabled -- and are some of the world's most desperate citizens. But, thanks to our compassionate community partner, a loving and safe "community" gives vulnerable children in the district of Ventanilla a chance for a fulfilling future. Global Volunteers offers broad-based support to improve their living spaces, nutrition, health care, and education.
Projects available at this children's home in Peru include:
- English teaching
- Repair and maintenance
- Health care
- Early childhood education
- Classroom teaching
- Labor and construction
Read more here about our ethical service program in Peru:
https://globalvolunteers.org/peruvian-psychologist-and-childrens-home-director-claims-volunteers-are-essential/
Video and Photos
Program Highlights
- Complete immersion in Peruvian culture.
- Work with Peruvians to support children who need it most.
- All logistics (except for international airfare) arranged by our staff, so you can focus on volunteering.
- Global Volunteers' policy: safety trumps everything. Volunteers are well taken care of by their Team Leader while on a service program.
- Discover ancient cultures of Peru.
Program Impact
Make a real difference in the lives of Peruvian children who need it most. Our host partner provides shelter, education, and social services to abandoned and orphaned children in northern Lima. Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) is truly compassion in action. Expand children's opportunities by providing essential services, playing with and guiding young children, assisting their caregivers, helping improve their classrooms and educational resources, and enhancing their health and nutrition. Thanks to volunteers such as yourself, the facilties at Sagrada Familia can be improved and the children have the nurturing space needed to grow and learn. Global Volunteers' commitment to work in partnership on long-term community projects enables you, in just a short time, to serve as a critical link in a chain of volunteer support spanning three decades.
Response from
We greatly value all our compassionate volunteers, and respect criticism in every form that it’s offered. In fact, many of the improvements we’ve made over the past 35 years have come from volunteers’ suggestions. Further, and although rare, we always fully investigate whenever community partners do not effectively engage volunteers in work projects that meet our standards for ongoing partnerships. This is what we did in the circumstance raised by this volunteer. Top management immediately responded by phone when contacted by our local staff early in the program, and we listened to the volunteer’s concerns. After isolating the primary issue to a work assignment, and confirming no matters of safety were involved, we consulted with our community partners and agreed to the adjustments the volunteer requested. The work assignment was completely restructured the following day. Most team members agreed that the program changes significantly improved their ability to be of service, met their expectations, and provided the type of volunteer experience they had hoped for.
However, this never should have happened in the first place. Because our commitment to fully engage volunteers in meaningful community work is so important, we subsequently stopped working with this community partner who failed to fully engage the volunteers. After reviewing the volunteer’s service program evaluation, we responded at length to her additional questions, and offered her family another service program at almost no cost. We’re that confident that the difficulties the volunteer encountered with this one community partner on one week in one host community is so isolated that she wouldn’t experience it again in Lima, Peru or any of the other 60+ partner communities we serve. We stand behind our 35-year reputation and track record of genuine development assistance abroad and in the U.S. While the volunteer declined our offer, we continued to respond to her written correspondence until our pro bono legal counsel advised us to clarify her agreement with us. This is only the second time since 1984 we needed to communicate in that manner.
Each Global Volunteer has a unique opportunity to participate in the long-term vision of the partner community’s development. Each is one link in a long chain of volunteers extending over decades. Working always at the invitation and under the direction of local leaders, our in-country staff make adjustments in volunteers’ assignments wherever and whenever they can to maximize the team’s contribution in the short time they’re in the community. It can be a challenge to balance volunteers’ capabilities and volunteer goals with local people’s current needs. In this, our staff excels. We strive to confirm project expectations before the volunteers arrive in the community. But, at times, there’s a mismatch. We’ve concluded that in this volunteer’s case, our pre-program arrangements were inadequate. While we strongly disagree with the volunteer’s conclusions, we’re grateful she identified a community partner weakness, which we corrected within weeks of her service program. We continue to solicit honest and candid evaluations from all our volunteers in Peru and around the world in order to deliver exceptional service to our community partners while fully engaging volunteers in service to those community partners.