Warmi Huasi is quechua for “Women’s House” and is the name chosen for a small Civil Association founded in 2003 by Columbans Missionaries Fathers Ed O’Connell, John Hegerty and Bernie Lane and three lay professionals. By 2018 Warmi Huasi had become well established, with 15 years of experience accompanying women and families in situations of poverty, writes Fr Ed O’Connell.
First in the parish of Our Lady of the Missions and then on mission to the town of San Benito on the northern outskirts of Lima.
The mothers in San Benito were saying, “The children, the children, they are at risk.” So the Warmi team responded by setting up homework clubs in community spaces, accompanied by mothers and teachers.
The Warmi Centre was then built to provide space for a children’s reading club and the meetings of the Children and Adolescent (C&As) organisations. Fr Ed got funding in 2014 to build a library in the main San Benito School, including reading books, so all 2,000 primary and secondary students have an hour’s reading a week.
Now in San Benito children and adolescents have spaces in which they are safe and where they are able to advance their education.
In 2015 a parish priest in the Province of Paucar del Sara Sara, high up in the Andes, requested Warmi Huasi to work there with children and adolescents at risk. The Warmi team, after a preliminary study, accepted the mission and set up homework and reading clubs in the parish premises of the provincial capital Pausa and in the convent in nearby Lampa.
When the parish priest was changed, the new priest did not share the same priorities as often can happen, so the Warmi team liaised with primary school headteachers to continue the work directly. This continues to today.
From 2016 onwards, Venezuelans no longer felt safe nor able to earn a living, so they migrated. Peru became a new home to 870,000 people from Venezuela by the end of 2019, many lived in North Lima in Columban parishes. UNICEF arrived on the scene and chose Warmi Huasi as a partner organisation because of our expertise in community development and for being well known and trusted by the people.
Working with UNICEF, we coordinated with three Columban parishes in San Martin de Porres district and set up homework and reading clubs for Venezuelan children, mothers were also asked to come along. We also invited Peruvian children to join with their mothers as well.
Activities were organised to integrate the children and their mothers, sharing national dishes, songs and dances. This proved very successful in breaking down prejudices and friendships were built that last to today.
Suddenly in March 2020 work came to a stop! The Covid pandemic hit and most families were affected. Warmi’s work changed dramatically too. Communications became virtual, by zoom and cellular phones, everybody worked from home. UNICEF continued integrating migrant children and adolescents adding an orientation on the pandemic.
The Warmi team designed a programme for adolescent leaders, both Venezuelan and Peruvian, to promote migrant integration and access to information on health, education and protection programs in the context of COVID-19.
Children and adolescents during the pandemic had literally been locked up at home for almost two years, frustrated and in some cases suffering abuse. Parents were at home with no work and food was scare. It was then that Fr Ed wrote an article in Columban magazines and funds came in from our benefactors.
As a result, we were able to provide vegetables and chicken to five community kitchens, run by mothers of the homework clubs. They served over 1,000 meals daily for three years to the children, adolescents and elderly people. They were heroines!
On returning to school in 2022, children and adolescents faced the trauma of having lost two years of education and having to jump up two classes – so our reading and comprehension programme became even more important.
The reading club in San Benito reopened in the Warmi Centre with the headteacher of San Benito School indicating the 60 children in most need. In Ayacucho, the Warmi team reached out to the smaller isolated rural schools.
This year storybooks, in both Spanish and Quechua, have been delivered and tutoring given to improve students’ reading skills to 239 children in 11 primary schools. The three children and adolescents’ organisations are active again.
The ‘NEICE’ group, which means “Our Effort is behind every Success” organise soccer skills in their neighbourhood park; the group ‘GLI’ meaning “Great Ingenious Readers” organise literary and cultural activities in the Warmi Centre and the Sacred Heart Chapel Organisation have their own vegetable gardens.
As well as fulfilling these individual plans, the children and adolescents’ organisations together organised this June a march in San Benito to raise awareness on taking care of our environment.
The Warmi Huasi team in both Carabayllo and Ayacucho designed a “plan of life” programme seeking to strengthen the personal development and critical thinking skills of 4th year secondary students in their transition from school.
Eighty-three students from San Benito School and 106 students from three secondary schools in Ayacucho are participating this year.
In a similar way, the Warmi team in Ayacucho, coordinating with the provincial municipality, has opened an Academy, given adolescents lack preparation to apply to public universities. It is underway in the largest school in the district of Lampa. This year 66 students from 5 secondary school in the province are participating.
Warmi Huasi’s mission is “strengthening children and adolescents’ skills to contribute to the development of their schools, communities and districts in defence of their rights” and this is being achieved. A number of young adults, now accompany younger generations, are their role models.
Our hope is these young people will stay in their communities and not migrate to big cities or other countries.
If you would like to support the work of Warmi Huasi please donate online here: https://columbans.ie/donate/ Alternatively, you can send a cheque payable to ‘Columban Missionaries’ to the Far East Office, Dalgan Park, Navan, Co Meath C15 AY2Y. Thank you.