Care Packages Anyone?
17 May 05
Jose took me to the Fe y Alegrio No. 43 - La Salle School today. We spent the whole afternoon touring the local school that he works at four days a week. It is run primarily with principles of sustainability.
All of the refuse collected at the school is recycled and turned into compost for the plants on site. The school experiments with different types of compost for different plants striving to find the ideal mixture for each. I was able to visit their huge hydroponics garden which was absolutely beautiful, made of very cheap, recycled materials. I am now thinking of how we could incorporate many of these principles into the refugio site, it would be relatively easy to pull off and could be quite beautiful as well.
Spanish check....it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to speak in English here which makes me absolutely thrilled! Even though my Spanish is still horrible, it is now the language that I am beginning to think in and reach for first....which makes me very, very happy!
After leaving Jose and getting off at the bus stop, I began walking back to the refugio. Two young boys I didn´t recognize, Paul 15 and Fernando 19, quickly caught up to me and began walking me home. They must have recognized the local gringa because they knew exactly where I lived in Zapallal. Though they didn´t talk to me for quite some time...I believe they were accompanying me home, making certain I was safe and sound. Very sweet!
Today is Naysha´s birthday, (so many birthdays!) so Lucy made yet another lovely birthday cake, a pineapple cake this time. I bought a tiny regalo for Naysha this morning at the marcado, a little bag of butterfly clips for her hair and snuck it into her hand after the children´s dinner which made her get all coy and giggly.
Alana and I were invited to Bridgette´s house for dinner so we made our way to Puenta Piedre to try to find her house which proved difficult and we were, as a result, half an hour late....we claimed we were just following the Peruvian way! Bridgette´s house is huge and lovely and she has a beautiful rooftop garden all to herself...she only pays about $115 a month for it!
Jose joined us for dinner, then walked Alana and I to the bus stop. Alana and I stopped to play pool at a tiny shop just down the street from the refugio...yet another Peruvian pool table....the pockets were incredibly small and the table was warped....I am blaming the extreme length of our game on those two things and sticking to it!
18 May 05
I have been contacted by a new friend, Don Ball Carbajal, who stumbled across my blog recently. On Don Ball Carbajal´s South American blog site I have learned of a website that you use to ship a weeks worth of staple foods to people in Peru. Inspired by the following excerpt from his journal and the many requests that I have received from my friends and family to ship packages of goods to the refugio, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to get people to send these care packages here to the refuge as well as to the community that I visited in Las Laderas.
Don Ball Carbajal wrote....
´What I find fascinating is that besides ordering every kind of consumer product imaginable, you can use Iquiero to stock someone's pantry. They offer baskets of staple ingredients at several price points. The biggest basket costs $52 and includes the items below. For someone living and working in the U.S., $52 would seem like a pittance, yet it could set up a loved one with enough groceries for a week (remember, big families). If one could find the name and address of a family that is struggling to feed their kids (and believe me there are lots of them) , it would be a lot of fun to surprise them with a gift like this. It would be the "random acts of kindness" thing, done up e-commerce style. Anyone game? I'm sure I could dig up some names from my friends...The "Complete" Grocery Basket, from Iquiero.com
3 cans of tuna
1 pack of soda crackers
3 bags of rice
2 bags of sugar
2 bottles of cooking oil
3 bags of beans
2 packs of noodles
1 bag of oatmeal
1 jar of marmelade
1 bag of table salt
1 jar of mustard
1 bottle of ketchup
1 bag of flour
6 cans of evaporated milk
1 large can of coffee
1 can of cocoa
1 can of peaches
1 can of fruit salad
1 can of spaghetti sauce
1 can of gelatin
1 envelope of chicken bullion
1 box of chocolate pudding
1 envelope of pudding
1 bottle of vinegar´
For the full journal entry, please see Don Ball Carbajal´s blog at http://sajournal.blogspot.com/
Anyone interested in participating in this? These baskets can be shipped either here to the refuge care of Lucinda Taboada Peña De Odar or to Rosa Romero Sancho for distribution to the many families in need in Los Laderas at...
Lucinda Taboada Peña De Odar
Proyecto Peru
Mz. P2 Lt4 Calle Santa Patricia
El Dorado - Zapallal
Puente Piedra
Lima 22
00.51.1.5502209 Refuge phone number
Rosa Romero Sancho
Mz. E Lote 19
Las Lederas de Chillon
Peru
00.51.1.5510015 Rosa`s phone number
Jose took me to the Fe y Alegrio No. 43 - La Salle School today. We spent the whole afternoon touring the local school that he works at four days a week. It is run primarily with principles of sustainability.
All of the refuse collected at the school is recycled and turned into compost for the plants on site. The school experiments with different types of compost for different plants striving to find the ideal mixture for each. I was able to visit their huge hydroponics garden which was absolutely beautiful, made of very cheap, recycled materials. I am now thinking of how we could incorporate many of these principles into the refugio site, it would be relatively easy to pull off and could be quite beautiful as well.
Spanish check....it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to speak in English here which makes me absolutely thrilled! Even though my Spanish is still horrible, it is now the language that I am beginning to think in and reach for first....which makes me very, very happy!
After leaving Jose and getting off at the bus stop, I began walking back to the refugio. Two young boys I didn´t recognize, Paul 15 and Fernando 19, quickly caught up to me and began walking me home. They must have recognized the local gringa because they knew exactly where I lived in Zapallal. Though they didn´t talk to me for quite some time...I believe they were accompanying me home, making certain I was safe and sound. Very sweet!
Today is Naysha´s birthday, (so many birthdays!) so Lucy made yet another lovely birthday cake, a pineapple cake this time. I bought a tiny regalo for Naysha this morning at the marcado, a little bag of butterfly clips for her hair and snuck it into her hand after the children´s dinner which made her get all coy and giggly.
Alana and I were invited to Bridgette´s house for dinner so we made our way to Puenta Piedre to try to find her house which proved difficult and we were, as a result, half an hour late....we claimed we were just following the Peruvian way! Bridgette´s house is huge and lovely and she has a beautiful rooftop garden all to herself...she only pays about $115 a month for it!
Jose joined us for dinner, then walked Alana and I to the bus stop. Alana and I stopped to play pool at a tiny shop just down the street from the refugio...yet another Peruvian pool table....the pockets were incredibly small and the table was warped....I am blaming the extreme length of our game on those two things and sticking to it!
18 May 05
I have been contacted by a new friend, Don Ball Carbajal, who stumbled across my blog recently. On Don Ball Carbajal´s South American blog site I have learned of a website that you use to ship a weeks worth of staple foods to people in Peru. Inspired by the following excerpt from his journal and the many requests that I have received from my friends and family to ship packages of goods to the refugio, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to get people to send these care packages here to the refuge as well as to the community that I visited in Las Laderas.
Don Ball Carbajal wrote....
´What I find fascinating is that besides ordering every kind of consumer product imaginable, you can use Iquiero to stock someone's pantry. They offer baskets of staple ingredients at several price points. The biggest basket costs $52 and includes the items below. For someone living and working in the U.S., $52 would seem like a pittance, yet it could set up a loved one with enough groceries for a week (remember, big families). If one could find the name and address of a family that is struggling to feed their kids (and believe me there are lots of them) , it would be a lot of fun to surprise them with a gift like this. It would be the "random acts of kindness" thing, done up e-commerce style. Anyone game? I'm sure I could dig up some names from my friends...The "Complete" Grocery Basket, from Iquiero.com
3 cans of tuna
1 pack of soda crackers
3 bags of rice
2 bags of sugar
2 bottles of cooking oil
3 bags of beans
2 packs of noodles
1 bag of oatmeal
1 jar of marmelade
1 bag of table salt
1 jar of mustard
1 bottle of ketchup
1 bag of flour
6 cans of evaporated milk
1 large can of coffee
1 can of cocoa
1 can of peaches
1 can of fruit salad
1 can of spaghetti sauce
1 can of gelatin
1 envelope of chicken bullion
1 box of chocolate pudding
1 envelope of pudding
1 bottle of vinegar´
For the full journal entry, please see Don Ball Carbajal´s blog at http://sajournal.blogspot.com/
Anyone interested in participating in this? These baskets can be shipped either here to the refuge care of Lucinda Taboada Peña De Odar or to Rosa Romero Sancho for distribution to the many families in need in Los Laderas at...
Lucinda Taboada Peña De Odar
Proyecto Peru
Mz. P2 Lt4 Calle Santa Patricia
El Dorado - Zapallal
Puente Piedra
Lima 22
00.51.1.5502209 Refuge phone number
Rosa Romero Sancho
Mz. E Lote 19
Las Lederas de Chillon
Peru
00.51.1.5510015 Rosa`s phone number
posted by Rebel at 10:23 AM
5 Comments:
Hi everyone! This is Don. Over the next day or so, I will create some easy instructions for everyone to follow (including those of us who are Spanish-challenged) and post them on my site. Rebel, you can copy whatever you want and post it here, if you wish. Thanks everyone for your interest in this experimental form of charity! I'm personally excited to think that you can pay a few bucks today and know that some beautiful, deserving children will eat better the next day.
Rebecca,
Looks like we'll need phone numbers of the recipients if that's at all possible. I'll bet they have one at the refuge, but not at Las Laderas. Perhaps Lucy could take any calls for Las Laderas? It'll probably be a delivery person calling to see if anyone will be there...
d.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Thanks Don,
I will add phone numbers for both places to my entry!
Thanks again for attempting this with me, it means a lot! Can you think of any way that we might be able to monitor the success of this?
Can you or I be notified by email or something upon orders placed-deliveries?
Rebecca,
It's a go! Here's the link: http://sajournal.blogspot.com/2005/06/one-click-care-packages.html
I tried to make things as clear cut as possible. If anyone has any questions or needs help, just write me at don[at]polymerstudios.com.
Also, if anyone places an order, could you please report back just to confirm that the information and instructions are accurate?
As for tracking... I tried to see if there was anyway to set up a single user account (but let people use their own CC info), but that doesn't work given that when they run the credit card, they need to match your card info with your name, address, etc. So, I think we'll just have to rely on anecdotal information.
One last idea for you Rebecca...if you would be willing to take some snapshots and post them to Flickr, I'd love to have some goodies (cake, pop, toys, etc.) sent to the refugio for your farewell party. You game?
Take care in Huaraz!
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