Las Vidas Mejoradas

We at Las Vidas Mejoradas want to thank all of the non-profits who submitted a total of eight proposals for review and possible collaboration. We were struck by the fact that there is no shortage of good work to do, or conscientious, caring nonprofits and people behind them in The Sacred Valley. Thank you!

Our decision was reached after much deliberation. It was important to us to select a project that not only reflected our mission but also affected the greatest number of people, and that our grant go to complete a project rather than fund a portion of an ongoing project. As a federally tax-exempt nonprofit here in the US, we are prevented from collecting donations for an individual person (called earmarking), and thus cannot fund such requests, no matter how worthy. We are required to monitor closely how our money is spent, receive regular progress and evaluation reports, visit and participate, even if from a distance.

We have selected the Abre Puertas Project, “Integrated Adolescent Leadership and Healthy Development Program” as our first choice and as our second, Living Heart’s “Repair and Upgrade of a School Greenhouse”. We will be in contact shortly with the above groups to discuss further when the funding will be available for each.

Again we wish to thank you all for your carefully thought out projects and your patience during our deliberation process. Everyone is doing wonderful work and we are proud to be even a small part of it.

We hope that a year from now we will have raised the funds to invite another set of proposals for small grants, and look forward to a continuing collaboration as we all work together to bring una vida mejorada to the people of The Sacred Valley.

December 20, 2011

Dear Supporters,

2011 has been a year of completion and new beginnings for Las Vidas Mejoradas. We want to take time now to thank you for your support, both financially and through advice and encouragement, as well as to update you on the happenings in 2011 and anticipated work in 2012 for LVM.

Our biggest news is that we successfully attained our tax exempt status in September of this year! This means that those of you who have donated since April of 2009 can now use those as deductions this year at tax filing time. And yes, we will continue to provide receipts for future donations.

We returned to Peru in March of this year and revisited all the families with improved stoves to complete our two year program in Mandorani. Reports of our findings and photos can be found at our website www.vidasmejoradas.org.

Other news is that our work is beginning to take new forms and we are taking the time now in this economic environment to join hands with other small, committed, registered non-profits in the region in support of goals in line with ours. To that end, while in Peru, we researched and visited other non-profit organizations and their work in the vicinity of The Sacred Valley, in order to prepare ourselves to collaborate with other people on the ground in projects reflecting both of our missions.

We solicited and are now reviewing small grant proposals (approximately $500) from several of these organizations. Proposals include assisting with bus costs to transport disabled children to school daily; an adolescent leadership and education program in a small community that promotes completion of their studies, done through support in issues related to family violence, alcoholism and teenage pregnancy; a school lunch program; and repair of a greenhouse in a highland community. Our board is discussing these proposals with the goal of selecting one that best reflects our mission, affecting the most people we can, as well as being sustainable with both a timeline and a future in mind. We will write you later and post to the webpage with more information about the program we select and news of a fundraiser planned for late winter.

In closing, please consider Las Vidas Mejoradas in your annual end-of-year gift giving. We will continue to apply your donations wisely in programs that support healthier lives and environments.

Happy Holidays to All,

Laurie Iaccino, RN

President, Las Vidas Mejoradas

Hello All,

On September 12, 2011 we received notice from the IRS that our application for tax exempt status was approved! What that means for our donors is that any donations made to Las Vidas Mejoradas in the previous two years (from April 2009 to present) can be applied to your taxes when filing for 2011. If you cannot locate the statements that we’ve sent out over this period of time, please let us know and we will send a copy.

So what is in store for LVM now? Laurie plans to write to other small non-profits working in Peru to obtain grant proposals in the areas of health and environment. And over the next couple of board meetings in 2011 we will discuss what proposals we have received and make plans for a fundraiser.

Previously our projects were co-created working hand-in-hand with small communities and carried out with greater amounts of time (on our part) to do the work on the ground in Peru. Now with less time to be there ourselves, and less money, we look to forward to joining hands with other committed, viable small groups to continue our work together.

Thank you all for your continued support,
Laurie Iaccino and Steve Bouton
Las Vidas Mejoradas

This week Steve sent off a completed 1023 application to the IRS to apply for our formal 501(c)3 federal tax exempt status! Kudos to Steve, Ellen, David, and Laurie. Thanks to all for their time, work, and talents. We will keep you posted!

Hi everybody!
One more update here for you. We wrapped everything up in Mandorani on the 15th. Laurie and our friend Luisa went out and did the last two family interviews. A few words about Luisa – she is a Peruvian who contacted us on Facebook while she was getting a degree in Natural Resource Management from a college in Portland. We were never able to meet her in the States, but she took a bus from her hometown of Andahuayllas (sp?) to meet us and see some family and friends (in a strange coincidence, she has a sister in Soncco, where we built 20 ill-fated Inkawasi stoves in 2007). She is the oldest of ten children, from a very poor village in one of the poorest parts of Peru. The new mayor in her town is unfortunately not very receptive to her ideas (the old one was), and so she is now looking for projects to get involved in (or start). Laurie gave her some personal money to get started, and we are considering working with her in the future because she is smart and dedicated and amazing.
The next day we found a great cheap bus line that goes direct from Cusco to Ollantaytambo called Diamante Express (10 soles!). Our friend Leander of My Small Help kindly offered to put us up in her house. We were thrilled to see such unheard-of luxuries as a full size fridge and a WASHING MACHINE!!! Nice beds, too.
Once we got settled in, we continued preparing for a table at the Urubamba Bioferia (kind of an eco-fair & craft market). Early on Sunday morning we headed out to Urubamba (a 20-minute drive) where Tomas had agreed to meet us. For a while we just sat there as people set up the tents and tables, they all seemed to know each other and were really busy. Once things got rolling around 10 AM, we were mobbed by people for six hours straight. Between Tomas, Laurie, and myself we must have talked to 60 or 70 people. Most of them took stove plans (which we had for free), and about twenty took Tomas’ number down. Hopefully he will be able to make some money while helping people! The vendors were eerily similar to the Oregon Country Fair demographic, lots of dreadlocks and hippie garb. But they all turned out to be really nice (lots of these expats aren’t), and we bought a few things from various tables as the day went by. Another nice thing about our table was that it was set apart from the main section, and almost all of the people we talked to were Urubamba families in town for the regular market day (which was also happening up the street). Exactly the people we were hoping to reach. We left at 4 PM, sunburned and exhausted but very happy with how things had gone.
On Monday we took a hike out to where our friend Carlos wants to eventually build a type of eco-village for tourists. Laurie very reluctantly rode a horse partway, while I just huffed it up the constant slope. It took about an hour to get there, and once we did we were maybe 2/3 of the way up the ridgeline. Below us, on the other side of the valley, we could see where we had stayed for the Solstice dawn in 2007. The land has a lot of potential, but the only real development aside from organic crops has been a partial building frame (roof, corners, and floor joists). Carlos is going to be travelling and working over the next year or two and then he might have more resources to put into the project.
Tuesday we went with Carlos to buy food for the children of Thastayoc, the small village with stone/thatch houses that Laurie got so sick at last time (it’s at least 14,000 feet). We delivered the food and checked out the larger-sized stove. Tomas had originally built one with us in 2009, but we ran short of adobe and the stove apparently had not functioned well. It had been rebuilt with a big range hood that connected to the old chimney, and was doing a surprisingly good job of pulling the smoke up and out. Unfortunately, all of Laurie’s careful preparations (no food, coca tea) came to naught and she spent yesterday evening being very sick with soroche once again. So we decided not to visit Sipascancha this Saturday.
Carlos also took us by a school on the Ollantaytambo-Urubamba road called Pachar. It seemed like a location that could really use some help – the greenhouses had fallen into disuse and disrepair because the government had not repaired the water/irrigation system (meanwhile there are two huge rivers within a few hundred feet). In an area which is routinely (and deliberately) neglected by the government because of their leftist voting habits, this wasn’t exactly a surprise – but it was sad. They need an internet connection, those are much more difficult and expensive around here than they are in Cusco. We talked about the possibility of a school exchange with the head professor. As usual we saw a plaque with several nonprofit names on it bragging about the greenhouse, we would bet money that none of them have ever been back to check on it.
This morning we had a long talk with Sonia, the founder of the Living Heart NGO. We will be funding a community stove for them in a village of their choice. Tomas will build it and they will provide followup and updates. We are very happy to be able to work with them, they share our values as an NGO.
Today we are going to visit a family that Paskay helped out with some of the money we paid them for Mandorani follow-ups, and then in the afternoon we plan on visiting Lourdes’ family with Leander. Thursday is free for now but we’re sure it will fill up quickly. Friday we head back to Cusco for a few days of relaxing before the flight.
Thanks again to all of you,
Laurie & Steve
PS we will post pictures once in Cusco–internet too slow here!

Hi everybody,

Time for our first LVM update from Mandorani! We´re very happy to report that the project seems to have been successful even beyond what we had hoped for. At this point we have visited all but two of the houses that have stoves, and re-tested most of the people we had results from previously.

All of the stoves are being used in their original form, in marked contrast to our experience in Sipascancha two years ago. Of the 15 stoves in Mandorani, two were supposed to be built after we left, but that never happened. The chimneys are still there, they just didn´t get built for whatever reason. (And, of note, we originally had parts for 20 stoves and parts for 5 stoves were given to a small NGO here, Hampy. Despite attempted contact, we have no word on that outcome.) So we are working with a total of 13 stoves. The 11 we have seen are all in good condition, many were still warm from the morning fire. Anecdotal evidence from our interviews indicates that people are using about half as much wood as before (or at least consistently less). Cooking times are also reduced according to the women using them. Expiration volumes from the lungs (as measured with our peak flow meter) seem to be consistently higher, but we’re going to have to crunch those numbers later on
for more definite results. Blood oxygen levels seem about the same, which isn´t surprising.

Only one stove showed significant signs of wear, we think it was because they just didn’t know how to use clay to patch it up. Victoria, our friend who runs a local store, was in the process of rebuilding her kitchen, so hers was deconstructed for the time being. The other nine looked great. Our friend Florencio said that he had started having problems with draft and smoke, but once he cleaned the chimney it went back to normal – another good sign.

Everybody is telling us that they use the retention cooker baskets, some more often than others. But we haven’t actually SEEN one, and we get the feeling that maybe people are just telling us what they think we want to hear. That’s always a bit of a problem here. We always thought of the cookers as a kind of bonus or extra credit project, so it isn’t a high priority.

Yesterday was an almost perfect day, from the moment we got out of the taxi we ran into everybody we needed to see like it was pre-planned. We are still hoping to make it to Florencio’s house tomorrow, but he is the farthest away and we may not have time. We were also able to return the money we had promised (30 soles repaid, plus five in interest and five to buy a chimney cleaning brush) to every family. Due to some disagreements within the village from the last time, we weren’t sure how we would be received, but only one person seemed standoffish (she still took the money, though). Learning from bitter past experience, we included receipts with every envelope, plus copies of the contract and a one-page “operating manual.”

There were a few other things that were really inspiring. One was that the family who had seemed to have the most problems before (the ones who were throwing all their trash into the neighbor’s yard) was a lot more together, and the son had built his own kind of chimney setup in another of the houses. It was kind of like a range hood, not perfect but a lot better than nothing. On a similar note, everywhere we went in the village we saw other chimneys that we hadn’t built! People told us that it was another project, but we still don’t have all the details. We really really want to look at one, but we haven’t been able to yet. So the idea is out there and being copied, which is what we had hoped for.

Tomorrow we are going back out for the last time, and hopefully we will be able to test the last three families (one of which is a single elderly lady). Then we will be completely done in Mandorani, and move on to Ollantaytambo. We’d like to look at the five stoves that went to Jorge’s Hampy project in Choco, but that may not be possible. In Ollantaytambo, our friend Carlos has two projects he wants us to look at – a guinea pig farming project and a nascent eco-village which is still in the planning stages. We will be happy to leave Cusco’s horrific air pollution and oxygen-starved atmosphere. We think we are really truly done here, if/when we return it will be to work in smaller cities at lower altitudes.

For those of you who want to read more about our personal takes on things, you can check out Laurie´s Facebook page and Steve’s thread on ILX at http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=52987#unread (scroll down to the bottom for the recent writing).

Photos are also up at the Flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/stovesforperu, or you can just click at the tab on the right under “Blogroll” labeled “Our Flickr site”.

Thanks to everybody for their support, we couldn’t have done this without you.

Laurie, Steve, and Las Vidas Mejoradas

We’d like to thank all who showed their support for Las Vidas Mejoradas at our recent benefit! We made about $300 which will go to completing our current project in Mandorani. Thank you Sean of Cowfish! And congratulations to Leslie on winning the Peruvian weaving!

As you may recall, we are visiting the home of 20 families over the next month (3/28-4/26) who have an improved stove. Our goals in Mandorani are to complete health screening of the families, inspect the stoves for a clean chimney, as well as maintenance, and visit the centro de salud for more data on respiratory problems reported over the last two years. It is our agreement with these families should all be completed on their end (namely care and cleaning of the stove) we will return with interest their 30 soles that they paid to participate. (This approach reflecting a long held tenet of ours to not simply “gift” people assistance, but rather have participants “own” in this case, their stove.)

Following this we will begin research and visit projects underway with other Peruvian NGO’s in the vicinity of Ollantaytambo. We will also meet a family that had met with crisis where our donations were able to help the mother start a small business and get the children back in school. Our goal is to come home and report to our board what we have seen and to then decide whom we can partner with that aligns with the goals of LVM.

We will be posting here as well as sending out reports of our progress via our mailing list. Please feel free to email us at vidasmejoradas@gmail.com with any comments or questions.

Thank you all again for your support of this work.

Laurie and Steve
Las Vidas Mejoradas

Hi there! We’ve got one fundraiser coming up before we head off to Peru in April to do the followup work on 25 families that we gave stoves to in 2009.

This is a benefit at the dance club Cowfish, located at 62 West Broadway in Eugene. $0-20 sliding scale donation, no one turned away for lack of funds.

The event takes place on Tuesday, March 15th.

DJ Sleeve will be playing a wide selection of Latin American music including salsa, cumbia, chicha, reggaeton, and huaynos. Dancing attire is encouraged!

The music starts at 8 PM and goes until 11 PM. (Blog House with Michael Human will start then….)

There will be a raffle for a handmade Peruvian weaving. Come on by and show your support! We’d love to see you.

Yours,

Steve and Laurie
Las Vidas Mejoradas

Tickets are purchased for our trip to Peru! Both of us are busy at it, working extra and saving money so to cover our personal expenses, including airfare. We leave March 27th and return April 26th. Setting up our itinerary now. First two weeks will be in Mandorani, with daily visits, stove and chimney evaluations, as well as as many health screenings we can get done. Then it will be on to Ollantaytambo to see the folks from Paskay and to visit their projects. Our intent is to continue to support their work, as it is in sync with ours rather than to start up a new project on our own. We also hope to meet the family Carlos told us about (see below) to see how they are progressing.

Meanwhile, here at home in Oregon, we see the lawyer this week and Steve will bring in what he has done with the form 1023. We are also looking forward to a board meeting soon. There will be a shift in roles so to allow Steve do what he is best at (forms, meetings, record keeping) and for Laurie to do what she loves most, ie., continue to handle Peru communication, investigate worthwhile projects, as well as our web pages and blogs. We’ll have reports on our fundraiser and will talk about an upcoming one at Cowfish (a local dance club). These events help to support the actual work! So it should be hot! Mark your calendars: tentatively March 15th, a Tuesday night : Peruvian funk, psychedelic and reggaeton spun by our very own DJ Sleeve.

Happy New Year All!

We are happy to hear that the chocolatada was a huge success! Below a note from Carlos:

Hello my dearest.

This is a little gift for you and also it is a way to say thanks you for been part of this beautiful project, the Christmas celebration in the Andes.

My gratitude goes to all the people who help and support is some way. To MamaSharon and her constant work for the children of Peru, MeG from Spain and her big support, My Small Help organization with Leander and all her friends for their hard work in making it posible, Laura and her direct help with the children, Nelida helping in the shopping, My uncle Hector for making the bread, my friend Laura from Oregon and her Vidas Mejoradas organization, my dear friends Cindy and Charles, Christina, Donna, and all the supporters, thanks to Ruben and his small bus, My brother Eddy, Paul, Washy for help more children has their Christmas celebration, Roger and Noemi for their delicious lunch, Carmela and Sergio for making laugh the children, Sofia for her beautiful songs, Danni for the pictures , thank to the teachers, mothers and father for waiting with the hot water ready to make the chocolatada, , there are so many people who I don’t mention but been part of this celebration, my special greeting for all the children for been children of god.

Merry Christmas 2010 and happy New Year 2011

Love and light for all of you

Carlos Ismael Gibaja Tapia

(Pictures soon to follow!)

And also news of our benefit held in early December with the help of Nan Rothwell and Nancy Maxson: we made $1,043!!! Awesome!! Thank you so much to everyone!

We are wishing all far and wide the best in 2011. Thank you again for your support of our work, and that of Paskay. Let’s continue to make a difference in any way we can!