What We are Supporting in Peru

• Veronica’s House
  To address the immediate needs of rescued victims, providing youth with emergecy shelter, food, clothing, counseling, and referrals for health care.
• Vocational Training
  To provide a variety of life success skills to become employable, independent and help secure meaningful jobs or opportunities for further education.
• Long-Term Care
  To provide permanent access to services and meet the individual needs of people vulnerable of being trafficked
• The Surfing House
  15 children benefit from a house that they can call home. This place guarantees that children have access to education, sports, recreation, music, art, and health care.
• Ripple Effect of Music
  Helping chidren express themselves through music and promote social and vocational development.

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Giving Children a Chance

The harassment against street children - many forced to the streets at the hands and coercion of traffickers - makes it necessary to act fast and take the youngest children away from the threats of Lima’s violence.

Lupe is a young woman who lived in the streets since she was 8 years old. The streets of Lima at night are a very dangerous place for a young girl so she cut her hair very short and dressed up as a boy. Our team met her two years later and has been taking care of her ever since.

The Not For Sale Campaign is supporting a group of children that share Lupe’s tragedy. Their families live in extreme poverty and can’t provide adequately for the children, so the children are put into the streets to fend for themselves or earn money to help support the family. Many take advantage of this situation and force children into a life of sexual abuse and exploitation.

This is not the case with Lupe. Since being rescued by our Not For Sale Peru team she is now living in a healthy environment and has become a very good athlete. Lupe’s passion and ability and gave her a surfboard with the encouragement to pursue her
dreams.

Lupe has also become a good musician, and her talent has allowed her to play the “cajon” (Peruvian drum) in different performances. Another acquired skill for Lupe has been learning to make jewelry which she has been able to sell.

Our vocational program teaches children entrepreneurial skills where they develop their own products and we create a market for it. Lupe and others children are taught how to craft pearl necklaces, the proceeds of which are used to support other prevention and aftercare programs in Peru. This program has also allowed Lupe to channel money to her family, go back to school, live in a healthy environment and keep fulfilling her dreams.

Modern-Day Abolitionist, Lucy

The plight of street children has been a long political and economic concern in Peru. Lucy, our modern day abolitionist in Peru, began her fight for the street children in Lima years ago by providing a short-term crisis shelter. Her efforts have now created Generación, an organization providing prevention and aftercare programs to street children in order to develop entrepreneurial economic life skills. However, it does not feel right to call Generación an “agency” or an “orphanage” or even a “shelter.” It does fulfill all of these important roles for the children who go there for help. But none of these labels conveys the sense of extended family that permeates the place.

- David Batstone, President of Not For Sale

The Surfing Tribe

Lucy, our abolitionist in Peru and Not For Sale has created a dynamic program for street children revolves around surfing. Street children are often found in vulnerable situations, stigmatized and marginalized by the greater population. Thus these children internalize this perception, destroying any sense of self-worth. The Surfing Tribe is a prevention program that provides a passion for street children to empower themselves.

Lucy rents a house in a coastal town about an hour from Lima, where fifteen to eighteen kids live full-time. There are a group of fifteen children and teenagers living in the house and all of them go to school, practice sports, and are rebuilding their lives in healthy conditions.

Early on in the surfing program Not for Sale helped by providing surfing equipment so the children could learn how to surf. The children now eagerly surf every morning and some are entering local surfing competitions and performing at a high level.

Surfing has become a meaningful practice that brings physical, psychological, and spiritual benefits. The children are realizing that through surfing they can express themselves, compete, be respected, and connect with nature. Thus, they are establishing their sense of self-dignity through surfing.

Lucy’s innovative prevention and aftercare program currently runs with very little economic resources. In the last year they moved three times to smaller houses due to the high rent. The organization now needs only $1000 a month to maintain itself with minimal necessities.

Veronica’s House: Emergency Shelter

When Veronica turned thirteen she desperately wanted to go to school, however due to her family’s economic situation she could not afford the necessary books and uniforms. Veronica decided she would support herself by selling candy in the streets with the hopes of eventually landing a better job. She met a man on the street who told Veronica that if she wanted a better job she should dress nicer. The man then provided her with a shirt, skirt, and shoes. Veronica was grateful for the man’s generosity and took the clothes willingly. Soon after, the man returned to Veronica to ask if she had found a job to repay him for the clothes. At Veronica’s disbelief, the man warned her that if she did not pay him that day, the clothes would be more expensive the next day. Without knowing it Veronica had fallen into a trap.

Three months later, Lucy, our frontline abolitionist, met Veronica at a weekend beach camp. Veronica explained how the “lenders” of the clothes were forcing her to sell her body as a sex worker, serving numerous clients each day. Veronica was looking for a safe house where she could be protected from the pimps, but Lucy had no place to provide her safety. Just one week later, Veronica’s tiny body was found in a hotel room, strangled to death by a client with whom she’d been forced to have sex.

Veronica’s death serves as a reminder of the high danger children face on the streets of Lima. In her honor, Not for Sale has built an emergency shelter in Lima and called it Veronica’s House. Not For Sale now needs your help to maintain and equip the safe house for up to 20 young women rescued from sexual exploitation

Download this information (.pdf)

Peru Videos

Lucy: Abolitionist

The Surfing Tribe

Generacion