HELP WOMEN VOLUNTEER - PERU

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Empowering women in the shanty town Cerrito de la Virgen and in and around Huanchaco.

The HELP Women programme is about supporting women and women's empowerment in and around Huanchaco. Since this project began in 2007, we’ve been working with several groups of women, but currently we are mainly working with the Comedor group of women that has been organised through the Maria del Socorro Church. We started collaborating with and supporting this women's group in June 2013, although the Comedor is an institution that has been up and running for over a decade.

The Comedor group has a monthly budget provided by a large amount of sponsors from different countries. This budget provides the women with groceries to cook breakfast and lunch for the children and themselves and is supervised by an empathetic and sincere Peruvian social worker. The Comedor also provides the children and their mothers with a safe space where they can play, do their homework, do crafts or just have a nice chat with their friends and community members.

The HELP Women programme tries to help women in a variety of aspects of their life, which makes for many interesting volunteer opportunities. The programme offers different skills classes to the women which gives them the opportunity of selling their products to receive an income and put food on the table. The vast majority of women with whom we work receive a very low income and very few of them have jobs outside of the household. To give the women a better chance of succeeding and a means to earn an income, we want to offer them classes in basic business and marketing as well as workshops and training to support their education and personal and professional development. Many women in Peru are often unaware of their rights, live with domestic violence and many girls get pregnant at a very young age. Education and support for their basic rights, family planning and sex education is therefore also needed. The majority of the women have either no education or have only finished the first few years of school, and a few of the women have also expressed an interest in classes to learn some of the basics including reading/writing, maths and English

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Working hours

The Comedor is open and running every day of the week, including weekends, which provides a very flexible schedule. In addition to the activities that you'll do with them, the women also greatly appreciate support every once in a while with the daily chores of the kitchen, and this is also a great way to build trust and relationships with the group. Depending on how often you choose to meet with the women and their children, this position could be full time (20 hours a week) or it could be part time and split with another volunteer opportunity that is less time consuming (like Girls' LitClub, for example).

Volunteer roles

• Meeting individually and in small groups to build relationships with the women
• Supporting, attending and participating in group meetings, events, training and activities
• Giving classes or workshops on women’s rights/sexual education/domestic violence/hygiene/nutrition etc.
• Workshops or training in handy-crafts and things that could be sold for an income
• Sewing, knitting and or crocheting workshops
• Baking
• Marketing and business training
• Maths classes
• Literature and/or reading and writing classes
• English classes
• There is also flexibility for other innovative ideas, workshops or training that would benefit the women

We are particularly looking for volunteers with skills in crafts like baking, sewing, crochet and knitting to continue the weekly classes with the women.

Volunteer Requirements

• Age 21+
• Advanced Spanish level
• Minimum commitment: 3 months - the longer, the better.
• As this is a women's empowerment programme, we only accept female volunteers.
• Background in business/marketing, and or psychology, social work, women's rights, gender studies, social studies, sociology etc.
• Mature, flexible, patient, empathetic, enthusiastic.

We are recruiting for volunteers for a period of 3 months minimum, starting any time from January 2018.

Fee Required

volunteer@otracosa.org

http://otracosa.org/volunteer/apply/

Apply at: http://otracosa.org/volunteer/apply/

Training Provided

Language/Cultural Support Available

International Volunteers