Peruvian Politics: Presidents, Corruption, and Oranges

Hola chicos!

Welcome back to our blog, and to my first blog post! I have been a silent presence in the background of Maria's blog posts but am finally writing about our experience! Huancayo has been delicious, challenging, and exciting, and I'm so excited to share part of it with you!

One of the first things that struck us when we first arrived in Huancayo was the colorful paintings on virtually every wall in the city. Some were symbols like oranges or pencils, and we remarked, "Oh, maybe their main export is oranges!" Maria later guessed, however, that the symbols might be for different political parties, and she was correcto!

Over our first weeks, we learned that Peru held local elections in October, and a constitutional referendum vote in December, all to be put into action January 1st, just 5 days before our arrival! This election, and other governmental changes (including the March 2018 resignation of a previous President due to a corruption scandal!) has more of an impact on us and our work in Huancayo than we could have guessed. An aspect of a governmental change, such as that happened on January 1st, meant that two of the organizations that FIMRC has worked with for years completely changed leadership, and the FIMRC staff had to re-pitch their project ideas to the new leaders. 

One new project initiative is a holistic approach to improving the health of children. It partners with parents in order to have a threefold approach to improving  child health: educating children, educating parents, and making healthy changes in the home. It presents several themes to children and parents, and the goal is to have children and their families adopt practical habits to improve the physical and emotional health of the children, and their families as a whole.

Maria and I had the opportunity to attend one of these "pitch meetings, " and I was struck by two things. One was the absolute grace that Manouche, our Field Operations Manager, exhibited in presenting the program not once, not twice, but three times to the organization's leadership as different members trickled into the meeting which was set at a specific time. 

The second aspect I was struck by was that the leadership seemed very antagonistic toward FIMRC, an organization who wanted to improve the health of its children. One of the members asked, "What's in it for us?" I was shocked by the suspicion and also by the suggestion that a non-profit Non Governmental Organization (NGO) such as FIMRC should be offering a governmentally funded organization something in addition to bettering the health of children. Shouldn't this be the other way around? Shouldn't a governmentally run organization be seeking help to maximize its efforts and impact in the life of its citizens?

As I was reading about recent governmental appointments, I realized that the international scandal (called the Odebrecht scandal*) that caused the resignation of Peru's previous President has made an anti-corruption movement a priority of Peru's current president, Martin Vizcarra. This is impressive and good, and it gets at the heart of social justice - changing systems that disadvantage the vulnerable. At the same time, I see that wide governmental efforts to change systems are good, but they take time to actualize. This underlines the importance of social work- working at a grassroots level to effect positive changes in the lives of vulnerable people (the work of NGOs like FIMRC). This experience, among many, has helped me to see that social work and social justice can and must work together for the common good.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

Helen

*The Odebrecht Scandal has been dramatized in both a film "Polícia Federal: A Leí É para Todos," and a Netflix series "The Mechanism"