Recent Developments

CEDETE

We're through a third of the first trimester in the Basic Theology program of the Theological Development Center.  Abraham and I instruct four students—Cirilo, Emilia, Paty, and Alfredo—three afternoons a week for an hour and a half.  This trimester is an overview of the Old Testament, with a focus on the spiritual disciplines of prayer and study, as well as various techniques for reading comprehension and critical thinking.  Megan asks me how class was every time I come home, and my response has been, "Fun."  I'm having a blast.  More importantly, the students are really engaged, and I think the focused, intensive learning is already making a difference.  I was moved to hear Alfredo apply some our first lessons in his speech at the library inauguration.  Likewise, Emilia has been immediately sharing her new insights in her weekly small group with Megan and Areli.  I thank God for these Christians who are sacrificing time for class and homework in order to become better servants of God's mission.

Community Development

The flood relief effort has given us just the opportunity we were looking for.  By focusing relief on a particular area, we've been able to form more substantial relationships than a less selective approach would have allowed.  Abraham in particular has led the effort.  The outgrowth of this relationship has been the formation of an action group consisting of mothers from the cluster of neighborhoods where we distributed the relief.  We are helping to organize and equip them to mobilize their resources and abilities for community development.  If things go well in the next few weeks, we should be celebrating an official agreement between their newly formed organization and CUDA.  They have already brainstormed some initial goals, such as the formation of a community daycare or a kitchen for subsidized meals.  There are a lot of possible obstacles ahead, so pray for our work in this area.

Making Connections

We have now been in the boys school for the month of April.  It is so exciting to see the library space actually become a reality.  We bought colorful furniture and curtains, had the walls painted white, and arranged a large carpeted area for the kids to be able to sit down and read.

Before

After

I am thoroughly enjoying my work with Neil and Lucia.  Neil is a fellow missionary with a background in bilingual primary teaching.  Lucia is the new CUDA staff member of the library program.  We seem to have a good time together and compliment each other's gifts.

The teachers are excited about the program.  We kicked off the first Thursday of the month with our first staff development meeting.  Counting the after-school staff meetings, the modeling time on Thursdays and Fridays in the libraries, the additional library scheduled hours, and observation lessons (CUDA staff observing teachers’ use of strategies), the teachers will be able to earn up to 100 hours of staff development this school year.  Increase in salary is an incentive to teachers that earn staff development hours throughout the year.  We hope for the ministry of education to put their stamp of approval on our plan and seal the deal with an inaugural signing very soon.  It is in the works.
 
This month we are teaching the strategy “Making Connections.”  The children are catching on (though we are spending a lot of time on procedures and routines of the library space).  As for the days that I work with first through third grades, I have read-aloud, organized several group activities, incorporated the teachers into helping model the strategies for the students, and allowed time for the students to read on the carpets.  The free-reading time is my absolute favorite.  First and second grade still skim through the pages.  They love the colorful illustrations.  But the last time that I taught the third grade, it was like pulling teeth to get them to put their books away to get ready to leave.  The picture of those boys immersed in reading and enjoying it is what makes this program completely worthwhile to me.

I recently read a quote that I would like to share: 

“I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. I grew up in the projects. I never went anywhere. But I have lived a thousand lives. I have loved a thousand loves. I’ve wandered distant worlds and seen the end of time because I read.”

— George R. R. Martin

The location could easily be changed to Arequipa in this quote.  It is my prayer that many of our students can make the same statement one day about their experience in the Living Libraries program.

Cafe Connection

In late 2011, we asked for help in funding a new facet of our work here in Arequipa, Café Connection.  Thanks to your help we were able to obtain a building for not just the cafe but that would also serve CUDA in a variety of ways.  We opened the cafe in February of last year in what we thought would be its home for a long time, but plans often change unexpectedly here and this was no exception.  Due to problems with the building’s ownership, we were forced to look for a new place, resulting in our current location in downtown Arequipa.  Strategically, this location is far superior and we feel blessed to have found it, and to have gotten such a good deal from the owner.  After only three months of regular operation in the new location, we are seeing more clients and higher sales than we had begun to have at the previous location.
 
This is important because we didn’t open the cafe just to have a place to hang out, nor to drink delicious coffee.  We opened this business to begin generating income for the organization as part of a long-term strategy of sustainability, and to open new avenues for spreading news of our social justice projects in Arequipa.  It is quite rewarding to see how far the cafe has come after a year in operation, especially considering that four months ago we changed location.  Already the cafe is nearing self-sustainability and with the added traffic of being downtown, the cafe workers are having lots of opportunities to share about CUDA projects.  Just today, a couple from Florida, who had visited the cafe yesterday and learned about us, dropped off books for the library program.  They had brought books with them to donate to a voluntourism agency, but after learning about our work yesterday decided to leave them with us.  We’ve made contact with other NGOs, tourist agencies, and businesses with whom we might partner, all thanks to the cafe.  The cafe has also served as a place for our churches to host events such as women’s meetings, parenting seminars and college student gatherings.  
 
So a big thank you to all of you who have prayed for Cafe Connection to be a success both financially and ministerially.  Keep praying!  Soon we’ll officially launch a language school, our next step toward keeping CUDA as self-sustaining as possible.  You can stay in the know by following CUDA and Cafe Connection on FB or Twitter.

Development and Relief

The Christian Urban Development Association.  That is the name of our NGO.  This is where you consider skipping the rest of my article.  But seriously, have you stopped to consider what we decided to say through our name?  We are Christians who have, as a formal group, decided to work towards development in an urban setting.  Our urban setting is obvious (Arequipa) and our Christianity is worked into the way in which we carry out our work.  The hard part of our title to really capture is: Development.  Now there are a lot of definitions for what development (in our case international development) means: freedom, good change, advancement technologies and many many more.  What I find we have the hardest time explaining sometimes is why we’ve chosen development over relief, and if we will ever partake in relief work.
 
Where development generally carries a long-term outlook on it (community planning, basic services acquisition, health care provision, economic development, empowerment, etc.) relief is a here-and-now enterprise.  Handing out food in a famine-stricken country, rebuilding homes after an earthquake, feeding/housing families displaced by natural disaster or war, etc.  In any city like ours you will find groups dedicated to both causes.  In the poor neighborhoods surrounding the city, groups will hand out food, clothing, clean water, school supplies and other items to families that spend each day just trying to get to the next.  In these same neighborhoods, some groups will instead dedicate their time to community development and planning, training unemployed husbands and wives in skills to help them land a job, advocating on behalf of communities with no running water that the city would see their need and respond.  As an NGO we’ve chosen to focus on improving the education system in individual schools by teaching teachers how to teach (Nice, right?) and through empowering small-business owners with small, no-interest loans to help them take one step forward, and then another, and then another.  We have other long term projects in the works but they all fall into the long-term development spectrum and we have not had any desire to branch out into relief.
 
It is no surprise that often our desires are swayed by what we experience.  On February 8, the city of Arequipa experience its highest ever recorded rainfall of 4.8+ inches in just 5 hours time.  For a city that can go a whole year without receiving such a small amount of rain you, can imagine the consequences.  Slightly sloped streets became swiftly-flowing rivers two feet deep that could knock a grown man off his feet.  Car sized holes ripped open in the streets and, not surprisingly, cars fell into them.  The waterways/spillways throughout the city designed to keep streets clear ended up filled with mud and stone, causing water to spill out and the roads they were protecting to crumble and vanish into the flow.  We experienced this in my neighborhood where streets were “well-paved” and protected from rain.  In the poor neighborhoods on the mountainside where they have no paved roads, no drainage system and usually no electricity, the damage was less expensive but no less devastating for some families.  Houses filled up two or three feet high with mud ruining possessions and at times carrying them away completely.  Water and sewage pipes broke as the water took apart the ground itself, making it look like an earthquake had split the earth.  Some families came out of that storm just wet and cold.  Some families came out wet and cold realizing they had no food, clothing, blankets, or shelter.
 
In the face of this emergency situation, our organization is left trying to decide what we do.  While there is a way to “do relief” well, very often that does not happen.  While there is a way to do it well, we have no experience in this area.  Even still we are being stirred to some response for certain neighborhoods where we have a connection and would ask for your prayers and support as we assess what help we will provide to these families.  Since we have no money budgeted for emergency relief we will be seeking people to partner with us in our response.  I ask you to be praying, now, for how you might help one of your global neighbors in a time of need.  More information and details will be forthcoming and I appreciate your patience, prayers, and the support you all are always so faithfully extending to us.

Hiring and NGO Sustainability

People sometimes ask us why we, as a development organization seeking sustainability, hired three full-time Peruvian employees last year.  Sometimes they ask us this to lead into a follow-up question: Does CUDA intend to hire more full-time national workers?  The short answer is yes.
 
Our Peruvian directors (Alfredo, Abraham, and Paty) have begun the search for our next full-time worker who will be trained and then placed in charge of the library program.  We are quite excited at the potential candidate for this position, and for the sustainability and growth it will mean for our program.
 
As an organization we have had to make many decisions that not only affect our current situations but also will help direct the course of CUDA and its projects for many years.  One primary decision we made was to not take on high cost, short-term projects.  We believe that development requires time, dedication to goals, and expertise.  Instead of deciding to make our yearly budget project-heavy we decide to invest in experts.  To that end we hired our three Peruvian directors - Alfredo, Abraham, Paty - who have years of experience in their fields and a desire to promote the projects and goals of our organization.  By hiring them, we made an investment in the future of CUDA.  Instead of those high cost programs our goal is to create long-term yet low cost projects.  We want them to be easily reproduced in any Peruvian context so keeping costs low is important.  Our full-time employees ensure we have the manpower to reproduce our programs in multiple areas of our city without the need to seek non-experienced volunteer help.
 
In order to ensure the future of the library program our Peruvian directors determined that hiring a full-time director of the the program was the way to go.  The selected individual will be trained by Megan and eventually take over the planning and execution of the program. The library director will be hired by and will answer to CUDA’s Executive Director, Alfredo.  At the moment we have a presence in two schools but with dedicated employees promoting the program that number can and will grow.  We see many opportunities for growth with a full-time, empowered, passionate, Peruvian employee heading up the program.
 
So here’s where I ask you to pray for this process.  Alfredo, Paty and Abraham are beginning the process this week of refining our criteria and seeking out candidates.  As they work together to prepare and then interview the candidates pray that God would provide the right employee who will not only share our passion for literacy promotion but would also share our passion for the Kingdom of God.  We’ve seen Him provide us with the right people so far and we trust He will do so again.

CUDA News: October

Another month, another update.  There's been some big news that you may not have heard so get ready.  Before I do I'd like to remind you all to pray for the safe travels of Greg and Megan (their kids too).  They get back to Arequipa on the 28th and its fair to say that the work has missed them.
 
I'll start with Cafe Connection.  After eight months of being open we were faced with an emergency situation.   For months, we had been receiving notices from various banks and stores concerning the outstanding debt the owner of the building had accumulated.  Well, at the end of September, a letter came threatening repossession of the building but, more important, it advised us that a bank had received authorization from the courts to enter the building by force and remove the possessions therein.  This was understandably a serious concern, so we began to look for a new location in case the situation worsened and the cafe’s belongings were seized.  One week into our search, Alfredo happened across an option downtown and after two or three visits we decided to sign the lease.  We really like the new location and think it has a lot of potential.  It is downtown, one block off of the main square in an old-style sillar building.  We hope to reopen by the first of November, though this is still Peru, so we will see.
 
The micro-loan program is rolling along nicely.  Paty is now in charge of more weekly group meetings than I am and she is running them better than I ever could.  We are currently at the interviewing stage with one new group and a good number of loans are still available on the website with four more to be added soon (so go check it out (cudaperu.org/loans)!  One new development in the micro-loan program is the addition of a new type of loan aimed at low-income homeowners in newly founded, under-developed communities.  We hope to offer home-improvement loans at very low (or no!) interest for construction costs on their homes.  I plan on posting more about this, including our reasons for offering these loans, but I hope you'll prayerfully consider helping these new borrowers improve their homes.  More info coming soon!
 
As you may have read the public school teachers of Peru went on strike shortly before the McKinzies left for their furlough.  About two weeks ago the strike slowly began to lift and Neil Cantrall, who was left in charge of the program, has began to get back to work in the schools.   While he has not had a lot of opportunities to be with the kids this month he has had a lot of time to prepare, and to work with the volunteers of Put Them First, the NGO we partner with at one of the schools.   Pray for the kids at the schools we partner with.  They missed two months of school and must  make up that time in order to move on to the next grade.  As the school year winds down Megan will begin to meet with Neil and the other library workers to develop strategy and plan for next year.  It should be an exciting one and we'll have a lot of things to announce before the year is out.
 
Well that seems to be all the big news to share for now, with more to come soon as there are some very exciting things in the works.  Keep praying for the Peruvians we are trying to help, the CUDA staff and volunteers, and our stateside partners who help make this possible.  We are grateful for all of you and your continued, prayerful, support.

CUDA News: September

Our work here can be hard sometimes; and not for the reasons you might think.  Sure being away from family and friends is hard.  Learning a new language and culture (and learning how to survive in it!) is very difficult.  Adjusting your thinking and work habits to be completely self-starting and constantly motivated is tough to be sure but all these things can be overcome with time and dedication to a vision.  The part of working here that I have found hard lately is that I am constantly in contact with desperate people.  People with little to no hope, people who have been hurt before, people can’t (or don’t want to) trust anymore.  This isn’t the desperation of watching your children die while being unable to help - that is happening as I type this article and as you read it - but it is still desperation and I can feel its effect on me.
 
The lives of the people we work with have been hard.  Unless their parents were able to afford a decent private school, they were educated in a system that is underfunded, understaffed, and underperforming.  Bending or breaking rules is the norm.  The police can be bribed at any and every opportunity which only helps to reinforce the generally vague feelings about the laws the government enacts.  I mean, when your government passes laws in direct contradiction to each other, it is hard to tell legal right from wrong so why bother, right?  Machismo still holds some sway in the lower classes so while a husband may spend his afternoon watching the soccer game, drinking with his buddies, his wife spends the day taking care of the kids, house and her side business with little thanks and no voice in her own home.  This side business is the only income the wife will see as generally incomes are kept separate with each spouse taking individual  responsibility of the various needs of the household.  And when either one needs capital to help their business the banks are ready to step in and charge 50% interest (or more) per year, but that sounds pretty good because the money lenders down the street start out around 100% and go up from there.  When that loan becomes too much to bear the individual, or family, will simply not pay because they know that, usually, the banks won’t actually take away their collateral and instead will just write the loan off.  That’s good, but bad also because the next time they’ll have to borrow from friends, family, or that moneylender with his 100% interest.  
 
I’ve only listed a handful of the situations we find ourselves facing and working in.  When all of that comes together in a person I can’t help but see them as desperate.  Desperately hoping that we will provide a small loan to keep their business going, or add that one little thing they never can save up enough to purchase on their own.  Desperately waiting for someone to give them the time of day and listen to their words, to give their voice a place.  They are desperate to receive a small solar panel in their home so that their kids can do homework with good lighting and not get candle drippings all over the homework (not to mention the damage being done to their eyes).  Desperate and in need of friends that will build them up instead of tearing them down.  This is what we do and I don’t mind admitting that it is hard.  It is hard to connect that often and that deeply with desperate people because once they realize that we are willing to connect with them, and once they feel safe, they are all in.  Filling in those gaps, sharing our beliefs, building up, encouraging, teaching, lending, learning.  That is what we aim to do in Arequipa, to see desperate people and (acknowledging our own desperation) live in community with them. 

Big Things are Happening

I feel like I start every library article this way, but...  things are really exciting in the library program.  I wanted to write an article on all that is going on so that you are well-informed when I come in for furlough.  I have several things to share.  

1. I went with the CUDA staff to talk with the directors of the education and psychology departments about our program.  My job is to model for the teachers reading comprehension strategies that they can use across the curriculum.  But what I have found (among the third grade classes where I am working) is that many of the students we are serving cannot benefit from learning the strategies until they learn to read fluently.  In order for the children to work on fluent reading, they need daily one-on-one attention. We went to Alas Peruanas (one of the major universities) to ask for student volunteers to come and read to students.  I hope to see this paired reading program kicked off by the end of this month before I leave.  The directors were excited about the opportunity, and gave us permission to advertise the need among their student body.  Please pray for this program, and pray for open doors to share the gospel message with university students.

2. Along with one-on-one attention, we need to know exactly what reading level these children are on.  I feel immensely blessed that God has brought a fellow missionary onto the field here in Arequipa, Neil Cantrall, who is equipped to train us in the ways of evaluating these students. Neil just recently moved here with his family.  They are looking to partner with other NGO's and Christian groups where they can be used.  Neil taught 4th grade reading in a bilingual setting in the US.  It really does seem like God knew exactly what we lacked in the program and sent Neil our way.  There really is no other way to describe it.  What is even cooler is that Neil will be working with the classes and training my good friend, and sister, Nadia, in the evaluations. They are taking over for me, and they will be leading the volunteer program while I am gone.  Please pray for their work, and pray for the evaluation component of the program to help us serve the students' needs even better.

3. The program has some really exciting opportunities in the near future.  Greg and I will be talking to different Rotary clubs to raise awareness and initiate a discussion of applying for grant money to go toward our library program.  The grant would come from an international partnership between a US chapter and a chapter here in Arequipa.  For those of you that don't remember, Alfredo, the executive director of CUDA, is a past president of the Arequipa Rotary Club chapter.  Pray for our presentations, and pray for open hearts of Rotarians to see the needs of the Peruvian school children that we serve.

4. I am in contact with the directors of education at both Harding University and Abilene Christian.  I am scheduling times to meet with faculty and students in the area of education to plan for future internships, a possible education campaign, and just to bounce ideas off of professors that are more knowledgeable than me.  I am very excited to share about the program and meet new contacts to further the good work God is doing among us.  Pray for all of those things that I will be discussing.

5. And finally, working in these schools has opened a door for us to become more active in the school culture.  We will be offering a series of talks on different topics for parents.  Schools want to offer education to parents.  We are blessed in our Peruvian church family with many who are experts in different areas.  So please pray for the planning of that series, and the ones that will share with others that may have never received the opportunity otherwise. Now do you see what I mean?  It is overwhelming to me to think of the potential of this program and where it is headed.  God is in control, and he has blessed the work immensely.  Glory to his name!

Some of you may have already been thinking this way, but something new struck me the other day.  We are serving in Arequipa, trying our best to live out a holistic ministry– serving the whole person.  I have reached a conclusion for one end goal of the library work.  We are teaching children to read fluently.  We are teaching children to use comprehension strategies to better understand and delve into texts.  If those children can master those things, what can stop them from picking up a Bible and understanding the gospel story?  So many Peruvian adults cannot read well or comprehend the passages we read with them.  It is my deepest longing that out of this program, Peruvians will be equipped to read the Gospel message for themselves and proclaim it among their family and friends. 

CUDA News: August

Last year we wrote about the “plan” we had for CUDA.  That plan included bringing three Peruvians (Alfredo, Paty, and Abraham) on board as paid full-time employees.  Like all plans, good or bad, they run their own course and the new year found us only able to bring Alfredo on as the Executive Director for CUDA.  Though we really wanted to hire them all at the same time the funding simply wasn’t there so we started with Alfredo and decided to work towards a middle of the year hire for the other two.  Well we missed that mark as well but thankfully we found ourselves in a position to hire Abraham and Paty on a part-time basis starting in August.  So it is with a lot of joy and thankfulness to God that I can announce, officially, that CUDA now has three Peruvian directors working together to bring about justice, wellbeing, and joy in the city.

Megan’s article gives an in depth update in her article this month so you should check it out and pray over all that is happening with the teachers, volunteers, and students involved in the program.  On the micro-finance side things are running better than ever.  We have added two new groups in as many months and have one new group that just began forming this week.  Bringing Paty on board this month has been a huge blessing to the program.  Instead of just diving into the middle of things (which is where she already was) she decided to go back to the beginning and re-familiarize herself with all of our plans and practices regarding the loan groups which has led to some healthy questioning of our policies.  Abraham jumped right in this month and began the difficult process of becoming familiar with everything we do, every program we have and every person we work with so he can help make all of what the NGO does more holistic.  Sometimes we get bogged down with the details and mundane process of running a program that we can allow the spiritual side of our work to slide to the back burner.  Abraham’s job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.  One thing he did this month was plan and hold a seminar on motivation (a necessary topic for college students who just began a new semester) at Alas Peruanas, a university where we are making connections.  Pray for our directors as they learn to work together as a team, ministering to the city of Arequipa.

One last thing to mention and petition prayers for is our continuing education.  While on the field we are always learning.  Sometimes that learning happens through books or classes and sometimes (often) through trial and error.  In September Alfredo will begin a masters program from a university in Lima (via distance learning) in NGO management and I will begin an online program in international development from a university in England.  Our hope is that with further education we will be better equipped to serve the people of Arequipa to whom CUDA reaches out.