Protect 300 girls from Child domestic work in Peru

“When I was 9, I came to Lima from a remote community, very up high in the Andes, looking for better living conditions. I started working in a house. I felt invisible and felt that everything around me turned dark. I lived a nightmare in the houses where I worked: I experienced harassment and abuse. I don't even want to remember... I was just a girl, I was afraid, I didn’t know what to do and I wanted to scream all the time... but I held on. 

I didn’t know who to tell what was happening to me, or if they would believe me. I also felt guilty, I had that feeling entangled in me and I felt trapped. I thought about going to talk to a policeman. But the policeman would have told me to leave the house… and where could he go? I was a girl, Andean, Quechua-speaker. I would have ended up living on the street. 

And this is still happening in this country! Girls who work in a house as helpers are harassed, abused... those girls are invisible!”

This is the story of María (we changed her name and her photo to protect her privacy) and many other girls and women who start working as child domestic laborers. For them, it is very important that La Casa de Panchita, stays open, as it is a safe place where they can share their experience, learn about the rights of domestic workers and gain the strength to fight for them.

Thanks to you, La Casa de Panchita continues to provide services to girls and women who need them! Thank you!

Sincerely,

Blanca Figueroa

Many of the adult women we serve started working in domestic service when they were young girls. Thanks to our weekly radio program, "We are not invisible" (Sundays from 8am to 9am) they can share their experiences and we want to share with you two of them:

"I'm from Lima. I am now 40 years old. When I was 15, I started working in a house. For a while it was bearable, but after spending a lot of time locked up in that house, I became very anxious. It was a very difficult situation. For a minor, a 15-year-old, having to face the employer's advances, not having a schedule, working with chemical products... it was very difficult. Minors should not work. "

"I'm from Cusco, I came to work to Lima when I was 12 years old. The first month they treated me well, but the situation soon became terrible: I cried day and night, they beat me and I could not defend myself. It makes me very sad remembering, very painful. I have three children. I work to pay for their education, because I want them to be professionals, not to suffer like me. I never told my mother what happened to me. She thinks everything was fine... I never told her, nor my sisters and brothers".

This is why La Casa de Panchita is such an important space to protect girls and women who work in domestic service and offer them a safe space, where they have the opportunity to talk about their problems. Games, nutritious lunches, walks, reflections on the risks of domestic work... all this is possible thanks to your support.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Blanca Figueroa