Global Volunteers 2020Liz Díaz was 10 when Miguel Rodríguez found her selling candy on the street. He asked about her family and learned that conflicts with her mother had made it very difficult for Liz to live at home. Further, her parents were unable to provide adequate nutrition or education, so her future appeared very dim. Years before, […]
Community Partner since 2004.
Through the generations, the indigenous people of the Andes have lived in an interdependent society that relies on every member to honor the other. All work is shared, but more – prayer, play and projects are conducted as a community. The Quechua word for this mutuality is “ayni”, meaning “today for you, tomorrow for me,” suggesting […]
Student volunteer Josh Elkin describes his experience serving at Sagrada Familia in Peru while learning about himself and from local people. At the age of 18, he sought out a volunteer experience that would present him with challenges and help him to achieve a perspective beyond that of his home and normal routine. Here, he […]
Daniel Salazar was born and raised in Peru and joined Global Volunteers staff as Country Manager for Peru in 2014. He leads teams working with our partners at Sagrada Familia and La Molina, and manages all aspects of those programs. In addition, he serves as our Operations Program Coordinator, managing volunteer service program preparations and […]
Longtime friends Urvi Doshi and Suma Putcha have always been involved as volunteers within their local community in Allen, Texas. Then they decided they wanted to broaden their own and their teenage daughters’ horizons by volunteering internationally. Urvi and Maya (age 17) and Suma and Avani (age 18) spent a week serving with Global Volunteers […]
In this guest post, Peru volunteer Mark Bierbaum takes us on a journey to a caring community, Sagrada Familia, sheltering at-risk children in Ventanilla outside Lima. He writes about volunteering with his wife, Maggie, and their 17-year-old son, Michael, his nervousness about using his remedial Spanish skills, and his path to communicating cross-culturally with the […]
Personal referrals account for more than 40 percent of Global Volunteers’ team members, on average, each year. Not only do “word-of-mouth” recommendations lend credibility to our work, but they help us engage needed numbers of team members for each service program. Who do you know that would love to experience the fulfillment of volunteering with […]
“So how was your trip?” is a common question friends and family ask volunteers upon their return from a service program. How do you summarize in a few words – or even a few sentences – what waging peace through people-to-people service means? Anticipating this question near the end of his Peru service program, Mike, […]
Global Volunteers Alumna Maggi Gallaher said retirement has liberated her to indulge her appetite for volunteering. For her fourth service program, she served at Sagrada Familia, a community in Peru serving 1,400 at-risk children, from one month to 17 years. The community shelters about 600 homeless and abandoned children and provides nutrition, healthcare and education. […]
Paula is a 13-year-old young woman living at Sagrada Familia, a Global Volunteers’ community partner, in Ventanilla, one of Peru’s poorest urban communities near the capital city of Lima. During the summer months (December through February), Sagrada Familia quiets down, with only the resident children attending sessions at the school, eating in the dining hall, […]