VERY concerned parents

As parents, we were SHOCKED at how little adult supervision there was on the programs. Our child went on what we'd thought was a generally supervised program for 16-19 year olds. Instead, we discovered that the Projects Abroad teens were on their own almost every night, ending up drunk at the local bars and discos 3-4 nights per week! LOTS of drugs being offered to the tourists, and no Projects abroad adults anywhere around.

We paid for the Projects Abroad meal plan, and learned that the first three dinners served were: (1) cake and hot chocolate, (2) plain bread, and (3) a slice of bread and spam. After the kids finally complained that they weren't getting enough food to live on, the meals improved a bit, but our child spent a significant amount of additional money just buying FOOD.

We liked that Projects Abroad promised that our child would stay with a local host family, to learn about the Peruvian culture and get a local experience, but most of the kids on the program were simply put up in a hotel. The Medical program was supposed to be shadowing doctors for two weeks, but there was only four total days of that - the rest was mostly busy work. Not quite the hands-on experience we were promised.

One P.A. student spent 1.5 of her two weeks sick in the hospital with a nasty stomach bug she picked up, possibly from the unfiltered brown tap water. Another kid ended up going to the hospital after getting into a bar fight with another Projects Abroad student.

We spent a LOT of money on two separate two-week Peru programs and felt that the P.A. overall supervision was seriously inadequate. I could go on and on about the two Peru programs, but, in summary, as a parent, I wouldn't recommend sending my teens on a Projects Abroad program. We're not especially nervous parents, but we don't feel that the program was NEARLY safe enough to send kids that far away.