麻豆影院

With help from a group of CU 麻豆影院 alumni, young women in Peru learn to envision a better life, higher self-esteem and more personal agency

Its 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and Katheryne Rosa Barazorda Cuellar is prepar颅ing to work in her mother鈥檚 soup stall in the small Peruvian town of Anta, near the Inca capital of Cusco. Smart and seemingly indefatigable, she has a quick smile and infectious laugh.

Rosa is studying to be a chemical engineer, and she has unmistakable talent and drive. She needs them. Poverty, gender bias, and violence darken the lives of many young Peruvian women, including her.

But Rosa is lucky. She has a supportive family and help from a local nonprofit that cares for and provides scholarships for young women. And for the past four years, she鈥檚 also gotten the support of Visionaria Peru 鈥� a leadership and self-empowerment program in Peru鈥檚 Sacred Valley.

In Peru, women suffer higher rates of poverty and unemployment than men. 麻豆影院 50 percent of Peruvian women in the Sacred Valley region, which lies outside Cusco, will suffer severe physical or sexual intimate-partner abuse during their lifetimes, the World Health Organization reports.

Peruvians 鈥� particularly in rural areas 鈥� endure high levels of smoke from cooking over indoor fires. 麻豆影院 4 million of the country鈥檚 30 million residents lack access to clean water.

In 2012, CU 麻豆影院 alumni who are also 麻豆影院 Rotarians forged a plan to help address those problems by working to 鈥渆mpower鈥� local women 鈥� specifically in their ability to make and act upon their decisions.

That plan yielded a nonprofit called Visionaria Peru.

The group鈥檚 work is centered in the town of Urubamba, which shares its name with the river that flows past shops, farms, and ramshackle buildings painted with political symbols. Downstream, the river snakes below Machu Picchu and tumbles toward the Amazon River.

Here, tourists may drop $475 apiece 鈥� nearly the mean monthly salary in Peru 鈥� to ride a luxury train from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Visitors glide past squalid barrios where grandmothers bathe in ditches, children may breathe toxic indoor stove smoke, and dogs paw through piles of garbage, seeking food.

Here, in Urubamba鈥檚 La Quinta Eco Hotel, young women gather for a weeklong leadership training institute through Visionaria Peru. The girls 鈥� the team calls them visionarias (female visionary, in Spanish) 鈥� come from both the bucolic Andes and the noisy city.

At the end of the institute, the visionarias form teams and enter one of three 鈥渁ctiv颅ism tracks鈥�: improved cookstoves, water and sanitation, or solar lighting. The 鈥渁ctivism tracks鈥� enable participants to work on sustainable-development projects that they themselves envision and implement.

The project started in 2012 when Genevieve Smith (IntAf鈥�11, summa cum laude) was in Peru and visited a hogar (home for girls) supported by Peruvian Hearts, a Colorado-based nonprofit that works to end poverty and gender inequality by 鈥渆ducating young women and creating community leaders in Peru鈥攐ne girl at a time.鈥�

At the Peruvian Hearts鈥� hogar, Smith and Lindsey Ratliff (EnvSt鈥�12) asked the girls what kind of sup颅port they would need as they got older.

While the students in Peruvian Hearts鈥� college-prep program were smart and qualified to attend a uni颅versity, they lacked confidence and felt discriminated against because of their in颅digenous, and often troubled, backgrounds. By the end of that day, Smith and Ratliff crafted a project plan to support the girls.

Marika Meertens, (EngrPhys鈥�11, Mus鈥�11, MSElEngr鈥�13) a fellow Rotarian with experience at Engineers Without Borders, pitched the Peru project to the 麻豆影院 Rotary Club鈥檚 New Generations mem颅bers. Abigale Stangl (EnDes鈥�08, MSInfSys鈥�13), who is now a PhD student at CU 麻豆影院, eagerly joined the team.

Each member of the core trio assumed roles reflecting her strength: Smith with planning, Meertens in fundraising (including two grants totaling $55,000 from The Rotary Foundation), Stangl with project evaluation.

Visionaria Peru鈥檚 implementation team comprises 11 young people, eight of them Rotarians, seven of them CU 麻豆影院 alumni.

In four years, 55 visionarias have installed 62 cleaner cookstoves, sold 61 water filters and 75 solar lanterns, and addressed 145 students in workshops. Some 1,640 individuals have been touched by this work, Visionaria Peru calculates.

Visionarias themselves report positive results in their own lives: 80 percent said participating in Visionaria Peru improved their status in their communities, and 100 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the program improved their capacity to imagine and create change in their lives and the lives of others.

鈥淭he program helped me a lot because I had visions and goals, but I did not feel capable in making decisions,鈥� says one girl in an assessment. 鈥淣ow I am capable of making decisions and taking risks for my life.鈥�

Peruvian Rotarians are preparing to take full control of the project once Rotary funding ends this year.

Rosa, meanwhile, believes she will find a good job in chemical engineering with 鈥減erseverance and with my sacrifice.鈥� Getting to the university in Cusco is a four-hour trip several times a week, but the time she has put in has borne fruit: She just completed an internship at a top laboratory in Lima, Peru鈥檚 capital.

She is quick to credit Peruvian Hearts for its steadfast support. And she praises Visionaria Peru, which helps 鈥渦s to believe more in what we may be able to achieve each day, empower us, and give us strength to achieve our dreams.鈥�

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