SUMMARY:

Our primary mission: bringing education to children too poor, abandoned or abused to be able to attend school - BrucePeru-SOSPeru
By the end of 2005, more than one thousand children had entered one of our 22 schools. Many of them we have successfully prepared, registered and sponsored in state or parochial schools: and they are now completing their education. All the children who enter our programme are not in school when we find them, they will have very little prospect of ever becoming educated if we do not intervene.
Secondary missions:
At-risk pregnant adolescents - chukachuka
Thirty five babies were born to the at-risk adolescent girls in our Delicias program during 2005. All 35 have remained with their mothers, and with our help are being raised in as stable an environment as circumstances permit. [This is 17 fewer orphans than the world average for adolescent rape victims: 50% of whom abandon their babies at birth.]
Abandoned Mothers - motherscorps
We helped some of our very-poor-but-community-spirited abandoned mothers to empower themselves by taking responsibility for their own communities. Under our sponsorship they formed "Mothers Corps".

How we advanced our primary mission in the six Peruvian cities where we operated in 2005.

Departamento de La Libertad - City of Trujillo: Where we maintain our national & regional headquarters; 10 children's centres, a centre for at-risk pregnant adolescents (plus a language academy and 2 volunteer residences) - We moved our headquarters and opened a second residence facility for the growing number of volunteers required to tend the ever increasing number of our little schools in the Trujillo area. This year we operated a pilot project (in co-operation with the Ministry of Education) in public school No. 82071 (in Las Palmeras). The school gave us the use of one of iuts class rooms and we employed one or their reserve teachers for our children - who aged from 8 to 12 . Many were illiterate, none were in school when they came to us. Two of our international volunteers worked with the Peruvian teacher to attempt to bring the children up to the educational level of children their ages who had been attending school all along. Within 6 months, the Director of the State School examined our children and determined that all 27 of them were ready to enter the classes pertaining to their age. We continued to employ the teacher and assist the children. By year's end all but two succeeded in advancing to the next grade level. We and the State School considered the result of this pilot project to be an unreserved success. When the term break began - mid December - the Director of State School No. 82071 went with our staff to Lima and elsewhere to announce to school directors in the other cities where we work: the success of our programme in his school. This has led to our being invited to move our projects from our own little schools into State and Parochial schools wherever we work in Peru.

We suspended our project in Malabrigo (Puerto Chicama) an hour north of Trujillo in 2005. The Municipality and local school authorities remained adamant that there are no children in Malibrigo not attending school.

We did however send help to the little village of Motil, three hours up the mountain to the east of Trujillo, where a priest is working alone to educate more than 100 children..
Web Pages: Trujillo, Puerto Chicama, Cero Pesqueda, Las Palmeras, Las Delicias.

Departamento de Lima - Where we maintain a regional headquarters, 4 children's centres (plus language academy and volunteer residence) - With help from our friends at Kinder Zon we introduced our programme to Lima, home of nearly half of Peru's out-of-school children. With the generous and tireless help of some of our most dedicated volunteers, we manage to get 4 children's centres open within a short time. Our staff of Peruvian professionals (teachers, Social workers and a Psychologist) plus our merry band of volunteers went daily to teach, love and care for some of the toughest, most abandoned and abused children in Peru - one of our little schools was a two hour bus ride from our centre. Operating in Lima proved to be both more difficult and expensive than we had estimated when doing our initial research. And due to the highly politicised nature of Lima's population of poor, we were obliged to move two of our schools to new locations: where there were more welcoming families. But through it all we managed to keep the same children and continued to gather more. Between the April intake, those we gathered during the school year; and the December intake we brought a total of 203 unschooled children into our Lima centres: and by year's end we were welcome to operate our programme within the facilities of the Ministry of Education. Our first year in Lima proved to be a very hard won victory, and all the sweeter for it. We now feel confident of our ability to go on to reach out to more and more of Lima's out-of-school children.
Web Pages: Lima, San Sebastian, Las Americas

Provencia de Ancash – Where we maintain a regional headquarters in Huaraz, 2 children's centres (plus a language academy and volunteer residence) - We continued the work of our third oldest regional centre, bringing children into our facility to feed, teach and generally help them. In July we opened our first satellite children's centre there in the Shancayan barrio; and by year's end we were ready to begin moving our programme into facilities provided by the Ministry of Education. Throughout 2005 Huaraz continued to attract some of our kindest most generous volunteers.
Web Page: Huaraz

Provencia de Cajamarca - Where we maintain a regional headquarters, 1 children's centre (work with an orphanage and a parochial street kid's centre - plus operate a language academy and volunteer residence) - In early 2005, having only a few months earlier turned our original project over to a group of ex volunteers - who agreed to operate the model we left in their hands - we realised we had made a mistake, the terms were not being applied; and so we set about to bring back to Cajamarca a project for out-of-school children. To this end we worked on and off with the Hijas de Caridad, who serve up to 100 street children. In October we were able to acquire our own location. We sent a social worker from Trujillo to begin searching in the barrios and byways for out-of-school children. By year's end we had gathered 20 such children and had secured facilities in a Ministry of Education building where we would teach them. We also help the local girl's orphanage three afternoons per week , and continue to assist the Hijas de Caridad
Web Pages: Cajamarca, Belen, Hijas

Provencia de Cuzco - Where we maintain a regional headquarters, 3 children's centres (plus a language academy and volunteer residence) - The end of December completed our first year in Cusco. The original team of volunteers and staff set a high standard which we knew would be difficult for subsequent volunteers to maintain. Of the three original children's centres each has changed location at least once. We are now looking forward to being able to move our projects into state schools - as we are doing all over Peru - where pressures from politicians and factions will not be able to effect on our work for the children..
Web Pages: Cusco, San Sebastian, Santiago.

Departamento de Lambayeque - Where we maintain a regional headquarters in the city of Chiclayo; 2 children's centres - one in Chiclayo and one in little city of Lambayeque (plus operate a language academy and maintain a volunteer residence) - We opened our Chiclayo project in June with lots of help from an enthusiastic band of volunteers. Within a short time we had three little schools operating happily; and it looked as if this city (which is roughly the same size as Trujillo) would permit us to reach lots of very poor children, as we do in Trujillo. But then the positive volunteers completed their terms, and we soon had to consolidate two of the schools. We have recently been accepted to work withing Ministry of Education facilities, and again have positive volunteers: and so are looking forward to even better results from Chiclayo & Lambayeque in 2006.. Web Pages: Chiclayo, Casa Blanca, Los Portales.

How we advanced in other ways during 2005:

Shelter for abandoned, pregnant adolescents – In 2005 we continued construction on the Delicias Shelter (though not to the extent we had hoped); by year's end we had managed to complete approximately 60% of the facility. Note: This construction project has progressed slowly because, in spite of having received two separate unsolicited offers to donate the cost of building the shelter: no donations materialised. We have therefore progressed with the meagre funds we could manage on our own.: see Child Mothers
An additional setback in 2005 was that the community surrounding the shelter, Taquila II, Las Delicias, experienced a serious crime wave during 2005. In spite of shelter's sereem location - on a beautiful unspoiled Pacific beach; its structures were used to conceal carjackers, and its high walls were breached by robbers. For the second half of 2005 we were forced to reduce the work force and maintain an armed guard with dogs in residence. We are hoping the crime wave will be brought to an end in 2006, so we can get on with the project.

Recruitment of International volunteers – During the year, with help from Agenda SOS International, we received more than 180 international volunteers from 20 countries.

The founding of Mother's Corps - (Cuerpo de Madres) came into being when a group of volunteers from Bruce Peru, working to educate the poorest children in our Andean communities found our work hampered by the poor attendence of some children whose parents simply went off and left them alone to fend for themselves, or when children were battered and could not attend; young girls raped. So we turned to the leading mothers in the communities where we work, asked them if they would accept some responsibility for the welfare of families in their communities, especially the most vulnerable children.: if we would give them as much support as possible. The more dynamic and responsible of these mothers are now in leadership rolls in the growing Mothers Corps (Cuerpo de Madres).

Language Academies for poor people. We opened new language academies in Cusco, Lima and Chiclayo Web Page: Language Academies.

Panama and Ecuador – We again sent representatives to these countries to co-operate with existing children’s projects and to look into the possibility of opening our own centres there, we have decided to take our mission to these countries in early 2006. Panama. Ecuador

Peru: We hope to be able to open our programme in three new Peruvian cities. We intend to move as many of our sattelite children's centres from their present locations into facilities of the Ministry of Education as quickly as possible.
In the coming year we will quickly open our satellite children’s centre in El Milagro (in January 2006), and we plan to open several more satellite children’s centres in the poorest communities in the Trujillo area. We will continue construction on the Delicias shelter, and hope to have it ready to use by the end of 2006. We will continue to open satellite centres in Cusco, will continue the Huaraz centre as it is. In March we will register and buy uniforms for all our children from all our children’s centres: who are ready to enter national schools (and whose parents are unable to do the same).
We expect to reach more at-risk pregnant teens than we did in 2005, and to increase the number of ways in which we are able to help them.
We want to further support the project we started in 2005: "Mothers Corps " , empowering poor single mothers in their communities- including opening a microfinancing facility and entrepreneurship training for them.
International: Our objective for the year 2006 outside of Peru will be to open centres in Quito and Panama, and begin opening satellite children’s centres in barrios of these cities.
Volunteers: We expect to recruit over 200 interntional volunteers in the year 2006.

Our estimated financial requirements for 2006 – Our operating cost is currenty running at $12,000 to $15,000 per month. Be believe we can cover this amount by the following means: tuitions from our language academies (including English and French for Nationals, and new Spanish courses for Foreigners); plus direct payments from Agenda SOS Intewrnational Inc, our founder and friends.