My name is Soledad Agreda, and I am the Tour and Visits Team Leader of the Peru office. I have been doing this work for about a year and a half now, and my main responsibilities are to organize, facilitate and host individual sponsor visits and tours along with Elia Sipan, the Tour and Visits Specialist.

Our positions are thought to be some of the most exciting in Compassion. We get to go out a lot, travel on a regular basis, go to nice dinners and get to know many interesting people. It is true, my position involves these things, but it is actually much more.

With the purpose of giving a better understanding, I will describe one day in my life, but I would like to give some more information about me first.

I am single and still live with my parents and my brother. I have been working with Compassion for 12 years now.

Because I worked as a translator for children and sponsor letters before becoming an employee, when I became an employee, I started working with correspondence. However, my previous manager, who is now the country director, encouraged me to focus on sponsor visits as I had the skills of fluent English, intercultural experience and getting along well with people.

So I have been in sponsor visits since the very first year I joined Compassion. Besides the fact that I really like children and enjoy being with them, one reason I decided to work here is because I felt at home with Compassion.

As a result of my work, I have learned that I can do more things than I ever expected.

At first I did not know I could become a Tours and Visits Team Leader. In fact, the position did not even exist at that time. But as I worked through the years, I overcame some of my limitations (like not knowing Lima well; now I have a map in my head) and built my strengths (like my love for reading and history, a great help to answer questions and provide information).

Also, I have seen the faithfulness of God in the ministry and in my life and how He has taken Compassion and me beyond what we expected.

I believe we really have the opportunity to deliver children from poverty. And I still remember many years ago, while I was translating for a video, I asked the final question to the young mother we were interviewing: “What do you want for the future of your child?”

She held the 4-year-old girl, looked around the one poor room she called home, and seemed to think how trapped she was there, with a husband without a steady job, no education and the first of many children to come already in her lap.

Then she stared at me while she answered: “I want her to have a life different than mine, that she can study and progress … I do not want her to have my same life.”

So that is why we work. That is why I am here.

If I could tell you one thing it is that you should know how important you are for the children and how sad they feel when they do not get any correspondence.

Money means a lot, but emotional support and care is even more important for reaching our goal, which is what this mother mentioned: to give our children the chance for a different life.

Now let’s see what a day can be like for me. (more…)

After a two-hour bus trip through chaotic traffic, I arrive at a child development center located in the northwestern part of Lima City.

The center is in a quiet place far from the noisy avenues, although the homes of squatters surround the church mission. The houses are built with precarious materials that show the poverty this community has to face. The mission is on a large property with buildings built long ago.

As I walk through the church’s wide, dusty dirt-floor patio, the center director greets me. With a wide smile and wearing blue jeans and a black hat, she looks ready to film the perfect Western TV series. Her name is Miss Pino and she is a graduate psychologist who has also studied at a Bible institute and has specialized in child advocacy and child evangelism. She has been appointed by her mission authorities as center director for Semillero de Campeones Student Center, which started in June 2008.

In this position, Miss Pino has to deal with many things she never thought she would, such as trying to keep the center open. The rising costs of household items – cooking oil, chicken, milk, etc. – has led to a 20 percent increase in food costs for all student centers in Peru.

For Semillero de Campeones, this has made it difficult to manage a program with 166 young children to feed, from which 40 percent do not have a sponsor yet.

Because of the rise in prices, many student centers have had to stop some activities such as camps, retreats and extracurricular activities. The budgets for each center are simply not enough.

Development centers with less than 160 registered children, such as Semillero de Campeones, have been more affected as they have fewer resources to face the crisis. Therefore, in order to continue serving the vital meals to the children, Semillero de Campeones received a special assistance through our Complementary Interventions Program (CIV). (more…)

It’s hard to believe my boy, Edison, is 13 months now. He’s toddling around the house at different speeds with various amounts of control, experimenting with new and unusual crash techniques. It’s quite entertaining.

He can talk now, too. Hat, book, what and it’s impossible to forget his absolute favorites, hi, dog and ruff-ruff (of course spoken with a slight growl). I wish you could hear his little kid voice yelling all these words with abandon to anyone who will listen.

He uses his favorite words at very specific times. Whenever out and about, most anyone anywhere will hear his request for attention from strangers because of his very loud and clear hi!

But his real favorite is dog. It’s usually the first thing he says when he wakes up in the morning, and just to make sure I understand what he said, he will add a ruff-ruff for good measure.

It’s amazing to think that just a few months ago he literally couldn’t do anything.

Over the last several months, since I entered back into life after Edison’s birth, I’ve been volunteering in my church’s nursery. I typically take care of the newest babies, which is a great reminder of how far Edison has come, but even more it’s a great reminder of just how vulnerable babies are – which brings me to Carmen.

I met Carmen after a hike up a steep hill on a dirt path in the outskirts of Lima, Peru. All the while I was going up I kept wondering how far I would have to traverse to actually make it down the hill without falling.

Carmen knows this path well. She climbs it often. She climbed it when she was pregnant and she climbs it now with a 5-month-old in her arms. She climbs it because it is the only way to get to her house. (more…)

To talk about Easter is to talk about Christianity, and to talk about Easter in Peru is to talk about a variety of traditions in the country. The most common traditions began during the colonial times when the Spaniards brought their culture, and their religion, to Peru.

In Peru, that religion, Roman Catholicism, is still important:

• for many traditional families who live in Lima City
• in faraway towns in the country
• among the migrants who have come into Lima City from the Andes Highlands, the Amazon Rainforest or the many small valleys scattered along the coast

But among this last group, the migrants, are our young friends, our sponsored children. (more…)

As the kitchen door opens, a young man neatly dressed in a chef outfit emerges carrying a bowl of warm spaghetti and wearing a wide smile of self-confidence. Although he began cooking only six months before, he carries himself like an experienced cook.

“After finishing high school, I was not sure what career to choose, so I decided to write down all the things I like best and found out that the best option for me is tourism and hotel administration,” says Waldo, a 21-year old Leadership Development Program (LDP) student who is breaking the cycle of poverty by studying at a university in Lima City.

(more…)