Background: How the Reconstruction Project Came About

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, this January Leslie and I once again traveled to Peru to visit our son, Jason, and his partner, Lucila, who have been living and working in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco. They have both been teaching at a private, bilingual grade school. One of their co-workers, Mayten Sanchez, is from the coastal city of Chincha, near Pisco, Peru. On August 15th, 2007, a severe earthquake struck the southern coast of Peru. The epicenter was near Chincha.

Mayten immediately went from Cuzco to Chincha following the earthquake, and found herself immersed in the work of helping to organize dozens of “Community Kitchens” around the city. This effort proved to be highly successful in providing food to the many thousands living in the chaos of their heavily damaged city. As the immediate demands of providing survival essentials started to ease, Mayten immersed herself, with the use of her intact family home, in providing enrichment activities in a caring and loving environment to the many traumatized, and some homeless, children of the neighborhood. For assistance she called upon her many friends and contacts in the teaching, art, and counseling worlds to lend a hand in the effort. Jason and Lucila were among those first to respond.

What we saw in our days at Mayten's in Chincha was truly an Oasis of Hope in the desert (literally and figuratively) of hardship and despair. In the 5 months since the earthquake, many things had returned to a sense of normalcy, with the exception of the reconstruction of permanent housing for the majority of the population who are not financially up to the task. I haven’t found any “official” data, but my unscientific assessment in the neighborhood in which we stayed is that well over half of the population lost their homes.

The purpose of our time in Chincha, other than to lend a hand to the efforts of Mayten and friends (which we did through carpentry projects around the house, and woodworking workshops with the children) was to explore the possibility of organizing a “Construction Brigade”, to work collaboratively with local residents, to at the very least, plant a seed of hope.

In an almost magical fashion, several things came together to allow for the emergence of plans for just such a construction project. This is one of those opportunities, where for a relatively modest amount of resources, and the hard work of a group of focused people, many extremely positive outcomes can be realized.

Without going into a great deal of detail here and now, I am very excited to tell you that Leslie and I have made a financial commitment to a very well presented licensed Peruvian Architect, Carlos Cesar Torres Allende. Carlos has a strong resume in the area of “Bioarquitectura” (in the states otherwise known as “Green Architecture"). Carlos has designed and overseen the construction of Government funded rural school buildings built with earthquake resistant adobe construction techniques. (see Earthquake-Resistant Adobe Construction- A Tutorial link).

The recipients of this new building will be a couple who have for many years been Drug and Alcohol rehabilitation councilors, who, before the earthquake destroyed it, operated a residential treatment facility affiliated with CEDRO. This facility housed 54 recovering addicts. Since the earthquake, most of these residents have returned to live back on the streets. When we went to visit Jacob at the site of the center, he was working at making new adobe blocks by hand, without even a shovel!

Another very important element to this project is that it will be used as an educational workshop in the training of Earthquake Resistant Adobe Construction. There will be an ad campaign administered by Carlos to advertise to other architects, builders, and “rebuild-it-ourselfers”.

One other element to this project is that in addition to actual construction, a “how-to” manual will be created for distribution to local city building departments, architects, builders, and residents!