Volunteering
I travelled to Iquitos, Peru to work as a volunteer for an organisation called Formabiap. Formabiap is situated in the heart of the Amazon in Iquitos, Peru. It trains indigenous teachers to provide bilingual education at primary school level and wants to extend this to the high school level as well. The project was arranged by a Finnish organisation called KEPA, which twice a year chooses volunteers for a program called ETVO. ETVO is a joint programme of five Finnish non-governmental organisations.
My initial task was to develop a plan for utilising Formabiap's versatile resources in order to improve the organisations financial situation, its self-sufficiency and sustainability in the long run. Before leaving I got the opportunity to meet another volunteer that had been in the same organisation before me. This helped quite a lot in orienting myself to my life ahead as information from the Peruvian side was pretty minimal before leaving. I arrived in the capital of Peru, Lima, on the 6th of October 2003 and spent a few days looking around the capital area. The peaceful and beautiful Barranco district was definitely my favourite place in the otherwise pretty chaotic and dismal city.
In Iquitos the Co-ordinator of Formabiap met me and after a few days spent in a hotel I was offered a nice room in a house on Calle Raymondi situated in downtown Iquitos. Formabiap was a great organisation to work with. I was surprised by the facilities and motivated personnel working there. During my six months my work focused on translating and redesigning Formabiap's webpage www.formabiap.org, translating promotional material between Spanish and English, improving the organisation's publicity (I wrote an article for a local newspaper among others), communicating with the international co-operation organisations and providing different kinds of reports on Formabiap's operations.
During my stay I was often also contacted by numerous people and instances, which were, in one way or another, connected with the indigenous populations of Peru. People where very interested in e.g. learning English and asking advice on how to promote the various aims being driven by local organisations. One of the most interesting organisations, with which I worked with, on the side of my official work with Formabiap, was The Student Organisation of the Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon (OEPIAP). I helped OEPIAP in its initial fund raising needed for improving the situation of the indigenous university students in Peru by establishing a homepage for the organisation es.geocities.com/oepiap and establishing contacts with e.g. the Helsinki Univeristy Development Organisation (Kehy-valiokunta). If you feel interested in these kinds of projects related to improving the situation of indigenous peoples please take a look at some of the links provided on this page and feel free to contact me with any questions. Much is to be done and the instances working for important causes are unfortunately very under-funded and neglected by the Peruvian Government - any kind of assistance is appreciated!
Another important reason for volunteering was of course improving my Spanish skills and experiencing life and people in a developing country. It was all very much worth the trip and full of invaluable perspectives and experiences.
