Urpi Wasi - Peru

Ms. Barbara Casanova, a Swiss born nurse and some of her friends founded the Urpi Wasi centre in Cusco, Peru in 1989.

Urpi Wasi Child Day Care Centre provides a place for children to learn in a caring and loving environment, where they receive nutritious food and medical attention, in addition to instruction and formation. The centre tries to prepare all children for further studies. This preparation involves intellectual, personal and social formation.

Background Information

Urpi Wasi is located on a hill overlooking the city of Cusco in the Zarzuela alta, a low-income suburb of Cusco, at an altitude of 3400 m above seal level. The center provides meals, education and medical attention for underprivileged children. The day care center for babies to 6 year olds currently cares for 150 children and the primary school project educates 200 children from grades 1 to 6. Most of the children have been living in single parent households or come from very poor families in the village. Literacy is a key to intellectual, personal and social formation, therefore the project also engages in teaching the children's mothers to read and write.

The centre also provides food to 120 - 140 street children from Cusco each day. For most of these children, the meals at the centre are the only form of daily nourishment they receive. Each day of the week the workers at the centre bake small breads to feed the children and to sell in order to raise the money needed to run the centre. Although this project is very helpful, the money earned from selling the breads is not enough to supplement the token payments that parents offer to the centre.

Goals

The primary mission of Urpi Wasi is to provide a safe and caring environment that prepares the children and their mothers with the skills to successfully face the challenges of daily life and provide a pathway out of poverty.

FUNDACION URPI WASI is a registered foundation with the number RUC 20177428095. Its private kindergarten and primary school are state recognized educational institutions.