The Association Serving Alto Cayma (ASAC), as the executive armof Advent’s Peru Mission, takes great pleasure in reporting the following volunteer activities which took place during the 10-12 Sep 21 weekend of GWOH:

On Friday, we had an activity with one of the service projects of our Salir Adelante (“Getting Ahead”) student group, entitled Cuidando a Groot (“Taking Care of Groot”), named after the tree character in the movie, “Guardians of the Galaxy”. This project plants and nurtures trees in an area across the road from the ASAC’s service center in the Mujeres con Esperanza (“Women with Hope”) settlement. Friday’s activity was to loosen the soil around the trees and then water them. In addition to watering the surface of the earth around each tree, the students also filled the water bottles which they had buried beside each tree. These bottles have small holes drilled in the bottom which drip additional water around the roots of each tree for 4-5 days before becoming empty.

In all, this project involved 8 volunteers working for 2 hours each, for a total of 16 service hours. At the conclusion of the project, each volunteer was given a snack and a handsome face mask with the ASAC logo embroidered on it.

On Saturday, we had a mixed team of volunteers working to clean our service center in Mujeres con Esperanza. The team consisted of 9 members of the ASAC staff (working voluntarily on their own time), plus 4 student volunteers from our Salir Adelante program.

Because our service center sits high up the mountainside above Alto Cayma, it is subjected to high winds blowing dust across the settlement. The center has been little-used during the pandemic, allowing impressive quantities of dust to accumulate. All 3 floors of the building, plus the stairwell, were swept clean, and the windows were washed, before the afternoon’s work was concluded.

At the end of the day, Alfonso, our lead psychologist, helped the team relax with some fun dynamic activities. (Alfonso seems to have a million of these up his sleeve, and is always ready to trot one out.)

In all, this team of 13 people worked for 4 hours, for a total of 52 service hours.

On Sunday, Salir Adelante’s Hermanos Mayores (“Big Brothers and Sisters”) met with the Acercándonos (“Coming Together”) children they are mentoring. Due to the pandemic, this was the first time that the big and little brothers and sisters had met in person. For over a year, the mentoring has all been virtual, but effective nonetheless. Even so, there’s nothing like meeting in person to cement the relationships which have been formed.

Alfonso and Milagros facilitated some dynamic activities to promote those one-on-one relationships, as well as to build solidarity in the group. After those activities, a snack was served and ASAC face
masks were handed out.

There were 9 big brothers and sisters present for this 1-1/2 hour activity, along with 3 ASAC staff members, not counting the little brothers and sisters and their parents who attended, for a total of 18 service hours.

On Sunday, we were also supposed to have an activity in Mujerescon Esperanza in which the members of Salir Adelante’s Huellitas de Amor (“Pawprints of Love”) project were going to administer anti-parasitic medications to the pets in that settlement. However, this activity had to be cancelled at the last minute due to an emergency inthe family of Sandro, the Veterinary Technology student who was tolead the activity.

In spite of having to cancel one of the four activities we had planned, the three activities we did carry out contributed a total of 86 service hours, which we are very pleased to offer as part of Advent’s GWOH total.

“Love God, Serve Neighbor/Serving Alto Cayma”