Government, Police and NGO’s Working Together for a Better Tomorrow
This week, Ascend Peru witnessed an amazing reunion of more than eighteen different organizations working together towards a common goal. We were lucky enough to lend a helping hand last weekend for a medical campaign organized by the NGO World Vision in an impoverished area of Cusco known as “La Margen Derecha.” As a result of the assistance we provided setting up tents and giving a talk to the children about basic hygiene, we were invited to a gathering of the “Committee for the Protection of Boys, Girls and Adolescents of the Margen Derecha.” The team of Ascend Peru was able to see firsthand the benefits of drastically different organizations with diverse areas of focus playing on the strengths of one another to achieve a superior outcome, a concept known as “synergy.”
The aforementioned committee combines the prowess of organizations that have knowledge of the law, healthcare, education along with the physical support of the local municipalities and the national police to achieve what one organization alone could not plausibly pull off. After one year of working together, members of the community have noticed the pay off that this committee has had in the lives of some of the poorest citizens of Cusco. Among these benefits are the free medical campaigns coupled with training that alleviates immediate medical need while simultaneously reducing a families need to seek medical attention in the future due to turning better practices into routing. Another is training in human and civil rights that educate communities to better understand how to make their voice heard and avoid being taken advantage. Also, mental health and effective parenting training helps to coach parents how to keep their kids interested in school, off the streets and out of trouble.
Specialization is a concept that is not new for Ascend. Due to the acknowledgment of the fact that we can’t do everything perfectly, Ascend recognizes the need to work jointly with other organizations in order to carry out objectives that it could not possibly fulfill alone. As an arm of the Ascend Alliance whose current goals include expansion of staff and activities, Ascend Peru is looking for its place in multiparty efforts where our strengths will be amplified by the unified effort of many different organizations all playing on what is their forte. An additional benefit of synergy is the possibility of learning to better ourselves by working in close proximity with likeminded organizations that are specialists in areas where we currently lack expertise. All of these efforts play into the goal of empowering those in need to lift themselves out of poverty and give their children a brighter future.
On another note, the programs of Ascend Peru have been going well over the past couple of weeks and we have implemented new programs and have plans for more in the near future. We have a new Ascend Business Training class in a town called Huasao, which is famous for its “brujos” (male witches). This class is comprised of women who want to become renowned for their hen culinary dishes, and we think that there is a ton of potential. Additionally, we have implemented a new “Health Starts at Home” class, which aims to teach women about their role in implementing a healthy lifestyle for themselves and their children. We also carried out visits to some of our ABT Graduates to see how things were going and to see if we could help out in any way. We were glad to see that these businesses have had greater success as the result of ABT training. Go Ascend Peru! Happy Halloween!
