Christian Aid week begins on Sunday. Diane Parkes meets a Birmingham girl who has been in South America finding out where our donations go.
This week, thousands of households will have a red-and-white envelope dropped through their door for Christian Aid week. Many of us will diligently hand over a donation - but where does the money go?
The charity’s Birmingham-based volunteer development officer, Anna Burden, has just returned from a fact finding trip to South America to answer just that question.
In Peru and Bolivia, she saw projects aiming to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, visited local schools, interviewed families and saw the difference even a small donation can make.
In each case, Anna was visiting ‘partner projects’ - local organisations who receive funding and support from Christian Aid.
In Bolivia, she was in the Potosi region. An area famous for mining, it is also one of the poorest parts of the country, where 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and life expectancy in the region in the decade from 1995-2005 was 48.7 years.
She discovered how climate change has been making the lives of these tough Andean people even harder. “We were in a community called Sajsani with a project called Cipe, which stands for Centre for Educational Advance and Research,” she says.
“It is a very isolated community and the people depend on subsistence farming. They grow mainly potatoes, but they were saying that the frost is staying later in recent years and coming back earlier and this is affecting their crops.”
So, working with Cipe, the villagers have created a series of greenhouses which are making all the difference.
“They built walls and pulled polythene over the top and planted lots of different vegetables,” says Anna. “Cipe provided them with worms who create compost which increases the yield. They showed us how they were growing spinach, cucumber, tomatoes and chillis. That gives them a much wider range of foods but they are also able to sell these at local markets, which allows them to buy other foods such as oils and salt.”
The greenhouses have also brought about change in the community. “Cipe has been working with women’s groups and asked them what they wanted and they asked for greenhouses. What was so amazing was that they came up against so many obstacles but were determined,” she explains.
“For instance, they live on steep slopes where there would not have been anywhere to site a greenhouse so the men brought dynamite and made steps in the slopes. The rains came and washed them away but they started again. “The women say not only is it enabling them to grow different vegetables, but they have also seen a change in the balance of their relationships with the men.”
Education is also a prime area for development. “Sajsani has a primary school but if the children want to continue their education beyond 12 years, they need to go to another area and board,” says Anna.
“The secondary school mostly has boys. The problem is that many of the girls are needed to do jobs such as herding the sheep and when a family is poor, they feel they have to make a choice between education and jobs which need to be done. The older girls end up doing the chores and they are married at 15 or 16, so the cycle begins again.”
Under the new Socialist Government of Evo Morales, all Bolivian children now receive a grant which can only be spent on school-related items and Anna says that is beginning to affect people’s attitudes. “In some cases, it may be books; in others, it could be something like buying a skirt so the girl has clothes she can wear to school. It is whatever is needed to help that child gain an education, boys and girls.”
One family Anna met graphically illustrated this. “Norma is 13 and is now too old to go to the primary school so she helps her family by taking the cattle to graze each day and helps with the cooking and care of siblings,” says Anna. “Elizabeth is ten and she goes to the local school. She gets the government’s Juancito Pinto grant of 200 bolivianos, which is £20 per year.”
Cipe is also working with local women to encourage families to see the importance of education - for girls as well as boys. “In one of the women’s projects, they asked for greenhouses where the women were able to grow a whole range of vegetables. The women actually said that, as a result of the work they were doing, they had seen the balance of their relationships with their husbands change. If families are able to provide for themselves and women’s groups have more of a role to play in the community, it may be possible to encourage more girls to continue in school.”
In Peru, Anna saw the work being done to educate teenagers about AIDS and HIV when she visited the Jose Olaya School in Piura. Youngsters there were among those who have been taking part in courses run by local group Prosida.
“About three years ago Prosida started working with pupils from five schools in the poorest urban areas of Piura in Northern Peru,” Anna says. “There is a huge problem there with HIV/AIDS and with the macho culture and the Roman Catholic Church in South America, it has not been something that has been easy to talk about.
“If people go to a doctor, there is no money to test them so there has been a real explosion in HIV/AIDS.
“If people are becoming sexually active in their teens, there is a need for them to be educated before that and that is where Prosida is giving sexual health education information.
“When they started, a lot of the parents did not want to talk about it and even burnt the books. Over time, the pupils have developed their communication skills and say they have been able to talk to their parents about it so the messages are reaching a lot further and a lot is being done to remove the stigma around HIV/AIDS.”
Yet Anna also discovered the work is just a drop in the ocean. “Prosida is working with young people from five schools but there are 300 schools in Piura,” she explains.
Anna, who is based in the Christian Aid offices in Hockley, has been with the charity for 18 months. This was her first fact-finding trip abroad, aimed at preparing her for Christian Aid Week from May 10-16. Having interviewed people and taken photographs, she will be telling their stories to volunteers and schools across the West Midlands.
“The projects we visited are all local partners of Christian Aid, finding out what people need and responding to those needs,” she says. “What really impressed me with the projects was how much they listened to local people. It was not a case of them deciding what was best for communities, but of going into the communities and asking them what they want and need.”
