On the 15th of August,2007, people in Pisco-Peru lived the worst experience in their lives, a massive 8.4 earthquake, occurred and destroyed 80% of the city, causing 600 deaths, leaving thousands of people without a home, as well destroying schools and leaving most of the kids without a place to study and keep developing physically and intellectually.
The night following the earthquake undoubtedly changed my life. My brothers and I spent hours helping people get out of their homes many times having to remove kilos of rubble trapping them inside. During this long and terrifying night I knew my life would be different, I just didn’t know how.
Then I met Mark from Hands On Disaster Relief an american based volunteer organisation. I translated for him and watched as many international volunteers came from all over the world. I became more and more involved over the next 12 months. When Burners Without Borders took over the reconstruction work from Hands On I
found myself leading projects. Then in August when Burners were planning on leaving, I knew there were so many people still needing help in my community. So me and a couple of friends decided to start our own volunteer organization.
Pisco sin Fronteras, Our organization was created on August 2024, during the last 5 months, we’ve been working in a similar way to Burners and Hands On. We are welcoming international volunteers and locals. So far almost 100 volunteers have joined our efforts. We are providing sustainable solutions through volunteer efforts focusing on housing and education. By having Peruvian leadership we have no pull out date and hope to provide support throughout the hard times ahead of my community.
We started out by helping individual families rebuild their homes or get into temporary modular homes. Now our organization is building our first school, a kindergarten school called "Virgencita de FAtima" which will be the 2nd home for around 30 kids. We started clearing the rubble and now we are finishing some of the walls, having volunteers from all over the world working every single day on this project.
This has become our largest project since our organization started. All of us are really excited for this school and the future. As the Director of Pisco Sin Fronteras I would like to invite everyone to come and join us in Pisco. If you can’t make it we are always in need of support just see how you can “get involved". Remember a little goes a long way in Pisco. Our paypal link is set up and any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all of you who want to be a part of this amazing project and help us to help those in need in this, my community, Pisco.
