Creative Corners

Community Business Building in a Rural Village near Cusco

Village

Project

This is an exciting opportunity to work in Chocco - a rural community close to Cusco that has only just started working with volunteers. Young people in rural villages such as this one find life difficult and work opportunities scarce. We are working with a Cusco based organisation who coordinates volunteers for this project to create a reason for young people to stay in their villages and be proud of their communities.

Projects currently underway include Nature Hikes, a Guinea Pig farm and a Green House. This is an excellent opportunity for the children of Chocco to create a sustainable form of tourism and gain experience of running microbusinesses within their community.

Why we need you

Project 1 - Nature Hikes:

The children of Chocco have successfully hosted two practise nature walks - a guided tour of their communities surrounding countryside. The countryside is so diverse and with the proximity to local hotsprings it´s a great place to explore.The children have learnt to describe the local flora and fauna and brought their village to life through colourful descriptions of the local culture and traditions.

We are currently looking for volunteers who can work with the community to find ways to organise the walks in a more professional organised way and to assist in opening these walks to tourists in Cusco and help to promote these nature walks as a fun day out for anyone with a passion for walking, nature and genuine Peruvian culture.

The money raised from the walks will be invested by the children into the following projects:

Project 2 - Guinea Pig Farm

Among the Quechua speaking inhabitants of the Andean highlands, Guinea pigs are called “Cuy” and are a speciality dish. A historical dish, today breeding and selling these sacred animals is big business and the community of Chocco has the space and workforce to house a succesful Cuy Farm or cuieria as they´re known locally.

One excellent potential customer is the nearby town of Tipon - a place renowed for it´s many popular Cuy restaurants. At the moment they buy the majority of their cuys from the southern city of Arequipa. - 10 hours away. If the children of Chocco can develop their Cuy farm, it will offer the restaurants and microfarms of Tipon the chance to buy quality products locally and support the local economy.

Likewise, with it´s many festivals and abundance of tourists wanting to sample the traditional food of Peru, the restaurants of Cusco are also excellent potential customers.

At present the community has an ideal location with both open-top and covered sections but it´s lacking the financial support to provide the cuys with suffieient nutrition and create a living environment or ´cuy house´.

Their business plan is to invest the money raised from the nature walks into developing the farm. Once the construction is underway, talks will be held with local restaurants, businesses and other microfarms to establish contracts.

We need volunteers to help get this project idea off the ground.

Project 3 – Greenhouse

We hope that the Cuyera project will provide the momentum and financial backing to develop other microbusiness projects in the community.

The first action will be to regenerate the local greenhouse complex. The house was built five years ago using money from the village council and local government. It is located in the same part of Chocco as the Cuy farm and it would be ideal to have these projects running alongside each other.

The idea was for the community to cultivate plants and vegetables to be sold at local markets. There was some initial success but the problem has been lack of money to sustain and develop the project.

The community appreciates the amount of work required to restore the greenhouse and get it up and running again. For this reason they are viewing this as a daughter project - to be actioned once they have suffient funding from the Cuyera.

Anyone with Greenhouse experience very welcome!

Price

• £745 for 2 months £250 for each additional month

• £595 for one month

What's included

• Airport collection

• Organised accommodation in a family home stay in Cusco

• Comprehensive Travel insurance

• Quality pre-departure information, visa advice

• One week training programme. An intensive five day programme focussing on the reality of working in a developing country – cultural differences and misconceptions. Learn about Peruvian culture, history, gastronomy and popular culture.

Skills needed

• Basic to Intermediate Spanish required or be willing to learn before you go! Fluent Spanish preferred to work intensively with the communities.

• Marketing and tourism skills to get the walks off the ground.

• Have an interest in interacting and working with children from poor backgrounds in a rural area.

• Initiative, imagination and enthusiasm - ideas people!

• The ability to work independently without supervision.

• Business set-up, development and mentoring skills.

• Ability to work with limited resources.

• Ability to manage a volunteer workforce (in the case of the community walks)