By Danny Dodson | Executive Director
This week marks the three-year anniversary of our signature empowerment program, Peruvian Promise. We are thrilled with the results thus far and so thankful to all of our amazing supporters who have truly helped to make this program such a great success. We are excited to grow the program and offer this life-changing opportunity to even more deserving young women in Peru. We plan to double the size of the program in the next three years! We are sincerely humbled by the generosity of each and every supporter who has given to this worthy cause. From the bottom of our hearts and on behalf of the girls in Peruvian Promise, thank you!
During the past three months, the young women in Peruvian Promise have shown significant signs of growth and are quickly becoming leaders. They continue to mature as individual women, and at the same time have grown substantially closer more united as a group. The incredible support, trust, and genuine love they have for one another is remarkable, and empowers each girl with perpetual encouragement and the knowledge that she has a dependable group of sisters who will always be there for her. These young leaders continue to progress in their studies and are getting closer to completing their undergraduate degrees. They have studied English on a daily basis for more than 4 months now and each day they become more confident in their abilities to speak a second (or third in many cases) language! The girls also just received a brand news kitchen stove and their first washing machine in the apartment in Cusco. They are incredibly excited to not have to wash their clothes by hand any longer and can instead use this time in other beneficial ways.
On July 12th, five girls from Peruvian Promise flew to Lima to attend the FoCo Conference hosted by Fundación Angélica Fuentes. The foundation aims to strengthen female entrepreneurship by activating women’s abilities and capabilities so that they develop significant leadership skills that motivate them to exert an influence in the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres. Peruvian Hearts founder, Ana Dodson, was one of several inspirational speakers to address more than 10,000 men and women who attended at the conference. Other speakers included women such as Angelica Fuentes, founder of Fundación Angélica Fuentes, Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, Christina Berton, founder of the Amara Pro Self-Esteem Foundation, Senna (from the documentary, Girl Rising), Peru's former Minister of Culture, Susana Baca, among others. The conferences was streamed live over the web and at one point the girls from Peruvian Promise were recognized in front of the entire croud for their inspiring accomplishements. It was a life changing experience for the scholars who attended and after their return to Cusco, they shared what they had learned with the other girls in the Peruvian Promise. Peruvian Heats works hard to offer these young women opportunities for leadership, participation in service work as well as mentorship and regular empowerment classes. The aspiring young leaders in Peruvian Promise are taking full advantage of the opportunities that have been presented to them as they continue to flourish.
One inspirational young woman in Peruvian Promise, Rosa, is studying chemical engineering at the extremely competitive National University in Cusco. Rosa has seven brothers and sisters and currently lives with her mother and her younger sister in Izcuchaca. She commutes by bus over an hour everyday, each way to and from school. She is incredibly intelligent and driven to succeed and recently won a class competition for building the best model rocket. We are so proud of Rosa for her inspiring effort in school and know that she will soon be one of the best chemical engineers in Peru! Keep up the good work, Rosa, and know that many people are cheering for you and enthusiastic to watch your future endeavors and successes!
We want to welcome, Karen, as the newest girl to join the Peruvian Promise family. We are so excited to have another very special, incredibly smart and driven young women join the rest of our young scholars. Karen will graduate from secondary school in December and plans to attend a university prepertory academy to prepare fot the college entrance exam to study law. She moved into the Peruvian Promise apartment in Cusco, where seven of the girls in the program currently live in order for them to more easily focus on their studies while attending university. Karen's mother was extremely supportive and very grateful for her daughter to receive an opportunity to participate in this transformative empowerment program. Karen is a great addition to the program and will soon completely transform her own life and drastically change the lives of her current and future family members. She is the next girl to help us break the cycle of inter-generational poverty in Peru.
Find us on facebook/peruvianhearts for more project updates!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
