Plants and remedies

In Cajamarca, May is the month of flowers. That is why the coordinators and healers of the Community Program meet every year at this time, bringing fresh plants from their homes for the preparation of medicine for children with projectable capacities.

Don Antonio tells us that once he was coming from San Isidro, on a bus, with his backpack full of plants. They stopped in the city of San Marcos to have lunch and Don Antonio left his backpack with the driver, asking him to take good care of it because something very valuable was inside.

Someone must have been listening to this comment because Don Antonio couldn't find his backpack when he returned from lunch. Surely the thief hoped to find money, jewellery or a good cell phone - things that for many are objects of much value. But for us, these plants are worth much more than material goods: they are the health and strength of our communities, they are the goodness of the earth - which ensures a healthy and happy life for all.

Martha returns

Until the end of 2014, Martha Yglesias - from the community of Hoyada Verde, in the province of Contumazá - coordinated the Community Program in her area.

Then Martha got married, had her child and set aside working with children with projectable capacities for a while.

At the start of this year, Martha communicated with us expressing the desire to participate once again in the Program.

In May, Martha re-integrated by attending our Training Meeting.

Welcome, Martha. How good it is to count on your presence!

Nathalia informs

We continue advancing with the thesis project that we are carrying out together with the Network of Rural Libraries of Cajamarca: Andean routes and geographies.

This collective initiative seeks to systematize by recognizing what our organization has done and continues to do. The idea is to review the interrelation of the foundations, actors, places and actions carried out by the Network as an Andean entity that encourages and exposes the permanent relationship between nature and society, and as a proposal to be replicated throughout Latin America.

We will undertake some meetings, encounters, workshops and visits so that, between conversations, we may reconstruct history, observe the present and set the future.

Some pivots for the talks are:

- The fundamentals and conceptions that guide our actions

- The origins, the institutions involved, the processes and the contexts in which our project emerged, was consolidated and continues to live

- The personal experiences, the human, geographic and social influences and lived moments

- In what places, regions, landscapes and geographies is the Network found and spread

- The actions and projects jointly constructed to enliven the voices and the presence of the Andean rural communities of Cajamarca

- The challenges of the organization in today's society

- The strategies of collectivization of the proposal in the Latin American context

- The fabric of the geographies of the Network of Rural Libraries of Cajamarca as an entity that avoids breaking the ties between nature, society and Andean geographies.

Nathalia Quintero, from Medellín

Angela encourages

Huarrago is a community in the heights of Sócota, Cutervo province. There Angela lives with her husband and her three children. Aldana, the oldest, had a problem at birth and since then has suffered from cerebral palsy.

But thanks to the enormous effort of Angela and her husband, Aldana is improving every day. When we met her she was only three years old and could not move her legs. Now Aldana walks alone with the help of two walking sticks and goes to school. In the house - with the adaptations to the environment that the family has carried out - Aldana takes care of herself to a great extent and also helps with simple tasks.

But Angela's will goes much further. Several years ago she assumed the coordination of the Community Program in her area and is visiting and assisting six other children with disabilities in Huarrago and the surrounding communities. She also organizes a group of the parents of these children where they share and exchange knowledge and seek solutions together to any difficulty.

One of these difficulties is the lack of understanding of the situation of students with disabilities on the part of their peers. For that reason, Angela - since last year - goes continuously to the school of Aldana. There, during morning assembly, she talks about the reality of her daughter and other similar children in order to sensitize the educational community, aiming at better school integration.

Thank you, Angela, for this extraordinary effort.

Lynda once again

Lynda Sullivan has reintegrated as a volunteer after spending several months in her native Ireland.

Now, fully engaged in the tasks assigned to her within the Network - and especially in the Enciclopedia Campesina - her presence encourages and consolidates the thousand and one paths that open before us to walk and rewalk.

Our appreciation to Lynda for this generous joining, for that fruitful deployment.

May there be more encouragements like this.

As the writer Victor Hugo said: "No one is lacking in strength; what many are lacking is will."

We are capable

Our book "We are capable: Disabilities and basic treatments" has just left the press.

This document is the result of the work and training of the entire Community Program team to accompany children with projectable abilities.

Rita Mocker -Director of the Program- carried out the work and was supported in the revision of texts by Coordinators Nanci Huamán Campos, Humberto Huamán Lara, Sergio Diaz Estela and Lola Paredes Saldaña.

By not knowing some of the symptoms or characteristics of the conditions, we may proceed in a way that is not appropriate: this book helps to identify "disabilities" and at the same time provides aids that allow us to attend and accompany them.

In this way we continue accompanying, joining together and getting better!

Poverty

Just a few days ago, the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI for its initials in Spanish) issued the report “The evolution of monetary poverty 2007-2016”, indicating that poverty had fallen by more than one percentage point.

The study indicates that the monthly expenditure of a fifth of the country's population (6.5 million people) is not enough to buy a basic basket of consumption, currently valued at 328 Soles per person.

For a change, the report also indicates that Cajamarca and Huancavelica - for the fifth consecutive year - are the poorest regions of the country with poverty levels ranging from 43.8% to 50%.

In Cajamarca, the figures indicate, extreme poverty (more than 19%) is five times higher than the national average (3.8%).