Ayacucho Village February 2018/Report

Barbara Land, Executive Director of Nevada Building Hope Foundation/USA and Johnathan Erik Rodriquez/Director-Peru, spent two weeks in Ayacucho Village this past February. Barbara and Johnathan were joined by German International Marketing student Katharina Kohler as she worked on an internship with NBHF. Katharina was kind, generous, helpful, and intelligent young lady, Katharina worked hard as she assisted us in achieving our daily goals with our planned work activities. We are looking forward to working with her again in near future.

When the staff of NBHF travels to Ayacucho Village, there is much to do in a short amount of time. We visit each family, meet with the children, teachers, and community leaders as we discuss and evaluate our current programs and or brainstormed on new ones. Many families from outlying communities are moving to Ayacucho Village because of the educational support they receive from NBHF, 15 new children were admitted to the program and 15 new sponsors were found! We are seeing great international support especially from Germany! We are so grateful to our German sponsors.

We presented Walter Antonio Navarro Paredes, Director (Principal) of the Ayacucho School with a lap top computer for the Ayacucho School. We are currently raising the funds to provide the school with a water pump allowing the children to attend school during the high-water season.

The women often complain about eye strain from working on their artisan projects. With the advice of a local ophthalmologist, each woman, with such need was given a pair of reading glasses.

Since coming to the village in 2014, Barbara has developed a lasting bond and friendship with the women of Ayacucho. In the last two years, NBHF provided the women’s artisan group with shirts, sewing needles, elastic for bracelets, and hand drills, all the necessary tools for their craft making.

The women of Ayacucho requested that NBHF provide the funds for the construction of Artisan house. This house will serve as both an artisan house for craft making and a safe house. It was decided by the Board of Directors of NBHF that the funds for this house will be actively fundraised in 2018.

In February 2018, land was chosen and cleared by the women with simple machetes and a budget was created for construction costs.

DANCE, ARTS and EDUCATION

Movement activities including physical education seeks the physical development of the child through sound techniques of the moving body. Dance seeks the same development but adds the opportunity for the child to creatively communicate and express him/herself in selected movement activities.

Through dance, a child can express ideas and emotions, which he may not yet be prepared to express orally or cursively. Dance relies on motor competencies, but more importantly, dance attempts to reach deeper into the realm of creativity and aesthetic expression.

For the past two years, NBHF has been presenting dance classes in the Village of Ayacucho. We have aligned our dance classes to meet the standards, characteristics, and educational domains of both National Standards for Physical Education and the National Dance Education Standards.

The Gazette, the official journal of the Royal Academy of Dancing, London, England, wrote a story about this pioneer arts program in the Amazon Jungle. NBHF has received world-wide recognition for this program, the only one of its kind in the Amazon.

The children of Ayacucho have no forms of entertainment, no televisions, no cinemas, no music programs, and no organized sports. The children of Ayacucho love their dance classes, and through dance and movement they are given the opportunity to creatively express themselves in this a male dominated society. The dance classes brought to Ayacucho Village by NBHF has changed the lives of the children, they love dancing, and expressing themselves, with the most personal of all instruments, their bodies!

The dance classes brought to Ayacucho Village by NBHF has changed the lives of the children, they love dancing, and expressing themselves, with the most personal of all instruments, their bodies! Through grant writing, all the children in Ayacucho Village have dance shoes, clothes, and various assorted props for their dance classes. Bloch Corporation has been very generous in their contributions to Ayacucho Village.

In February of 2018, NBHF sponsored Silva Zumaeta del Aguila from Loreto Dance and Universidad Cientifica del Peru along with Sorella Melina Salazar Braga from Escuela Danzarte both dance professors living in Iquitos City to teach dance classes in Ayacucho Village. They were both given the charge to design and implement an arts outreach program for the zone surrounding Ayacucho Village. It is of great importance that all programs proposed and/or designed by NBHF be viable and sustainable. Both Silva and Sorella are Board Members of Nevada Building Hope Foundation/Peru. These arts professionals are extremely committed and dedicated to bringing arts and education programs to remote areas of the Amazon through outreach programs.

Anthony Nunez del Prado Ruiz and Brus Tejada Joya, cultural music and dance professors from Universidad Cientifica del Peru (UCP) will travel to the Ayacucho Zone to develop a traditional cultural outreach dance and music program.

In the summer of 2018, Reno Artist, Tia Flores will travel to Ayacucho Village and instruct the women on gourd design in the traditional Native America way. Hopefully, with Tia’s help the women will learn to make new and better artisan crafts.

In March, the campaign will begin to fund our 2018-2019 year. We will reach out to all our current sponsors for renewal.

he Nevada Building Hope Foundation takes great care with the children enrolled in our program. To assure that all the items paid for by our sponsors are handled in a fiscally responsible way, in Iquitos City, Carlos Enrique Lam Pajuelo and Diana Johani Lachos Ramirez both Attorneys at Law supervises all purchases made in behalf of the children.