Promesa Peru begins its new year in Monsefù

We were in Monsefù today to deliver some promised items to Patricia Custodio. We had visited her pronoei last November and agreed to help furnish her new classroom. The new classroom is quite a distance from the old and is being prepared for Monday’s classes, so we dropped off the items at the old location.

Late last year we had decided not to donate plastic chairs, but the carpenter Patricia has contracted for the tables needs a four-week lead time for 24 chairs. Patricia said she could not wait…the kids had nothing to sit on so she asked us for plastic chairs instead. The 6 tables could be ready mid-next week. We’ll return to Monsefù to visit with Patricia and her kids when everything is in place.

The cost for this project when finished will be:

6 wood tables - $174.42

24 plastic chairs – 91.05

2 storage shelves – 46.51

Transport – 16.00

Total - $327.98

The cost for one plastic chair – $3.79 is 25% over last year. Every merchant we talked with said the increase in price is due to the rising US dollar. They cautioned us that school supplies are seeing that same increase.

Thanks to the generosity of Chris Raupe, Clif Brown, the Alice Cool Foundation and others we had money remaining from last year to pay for this project, and there is enough left over to give us a decent start on the next project, which will probably be a pronoei in Patapo.

Now that we’ve got our first project for this year under our belt we’re looking forward to whatever the remainder of the year holds for Promesa Peru. We hope we can count on your continued support.