Fantastic Experience!

Coming from the UK to Peru by myself was a pretty daunting experience so I was so relieved to meet such welcoming people in Huancayo and La Merced! I spent 4 weeks in each site and had an amazing time!

The work days were mostly very fun. Some days we would shadow doctors and speak to patients in the hospitals and there's a wide variety of things to see across the 2 sites. Other days we would go out into communities and teach them about health topics relevant to them, take blood pressures, do glucose testing and the medical students in our group would speak to patients and examine them. We all enjoyed working with local people and the queues of them waiting to see us showed just how much they appreciated it too. Some afternoons we would get to visit local schools or orphanages and teach a bit of english or do activities with them which was really fun too.

There was a great social aspect to the groups I was with. We would try and meet up on an evening and at weekends and there's loads of stuff to do around both places. There's the glacier and market in Huancayo and waterfalls and a mini zoo in La Merced. A few of us would stay in each homestay and we loved being there - we were made to feel very at home with great food and were very well looked after!

I would thoroughly recommend this programme to anyone wanting to get involved in volunteer healthcare abroad. They are developing the sites in Peru and have lots of projects to help the local people there which you can get involved in. Peru is a great country to visit and FIMRC are a great charity who were very willing to help with any problems we had and organised everything very well in a country where organisation can be difficult!