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The Friends Project makes some friends.

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

On June 6, Club Vertex in Rochester and party hosts Mike and M.A. Dailor helped The Friends Project out with a fund-raiser.

We raised $128 to fund future projects. I’m checking into how it can be most useful.

Thanks everyone!

New homes.

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

I will be creating four individual posts with journal entries, a story or two and photos specific to each person or organization that received the money.

That’s real soon. Today’s June 6. So bear with me.

In the meantime, here is a synopsis.

NUEVA ESPERANZA – This tiny village of 194 people sits perched atop a red-bank cliff on the remote Yavari River in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. It is a day’s boat ride from another community and two days to one that has a store, lodging or any other services. Brazil, and logging concessions, are across the river.

As part of a volunteer group with researchers, we visited the community to help with the wildlife management program and to help launch a health initiative. The scientists are helping the residents hunt monkeys, wild pigs, game birds and other animals sustainably and want to provide better medical training and better sanitation. Malaria is a huge problem here. The homes are simple, with holes cut in the wood for windows. There’s a nurse’s station, but having a nurse practitioner there or medications there is hit or miss. For $300, we have paid for the installation of screens on all the homes in Nueva Esperanza. Come dusk, most families stay inside and this will protect them.

My friend Pablo Puertas, a researcher who specializes in community work, is organzing this now that i’m gone. A carpenter will install the screens in July and sent along photos.

Nueva Esperanza kids

BELEN

Iquitos is the largest city in the world that’s accessible only by plane or boat. It is in the Peruvian Amazon, and the hub for the region. More than 7,000 people live in Belen, a slum on the western side. In flood season, the river gets as high as the stilts the wooden homes are built on. The water is their bath, their swimming hole, their washing pit, their garbage and their latrine.

When the flood waters recede, what isn’t washed away stays behind in the muck. The city’s poorest are here, traveling in canoes and on elevated wooden walkways between homes, stores, churches and schools and the crowded Belen market. You can find anything here from carved up 8-foot caimans to medicinal plants and hand-rolled cigarettes. Schools are free, but children must bring their own supplies.

At the Instititucion Educativa Primaria Secundaria de Menores, says Principal Lilia Coral Puertal, that often means that they come empty handed. Parents often can’t afford to feed their families. With $90, hit a local “libreria” and bought 100 notebooks, pens, pencils, sharpeners, colored pencils and other supplies – enough to outfit 48 kids for some time.

Lilia said another traveler had visited there a month earlier and brought backpacks. “It is truly a blessing,” she said.

belenschool

Welcome to The Friends Project – Wanderlust and good deeds on the road.

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

Nueva Esperanza kids
The Friends Project was created in spring 2006 by me, Kris Dreessen. I have been traveling for about 20 years now, usually solo and on a shoestring budget, and living abroad. I have always gotten so much from traveling and living in other cultures. Inspired by Backpack Nation and the 100 Friends Project, I started my own project as a way to give back.

The Friends Project is a simple name for a simple idea: When I travel, my friends and I collect money. When I go, I find new homes for the donations where it can really make a difference.

In America, 50 bucks means dinner for two. In other places it can mean a food cart to start a business or treatment of malaria.

As a journalist and photographer, I believe I can share my experiences and promote understanding. I may travel alone, but I can bring others along on the journey through my work.

I spent three weeks in the Peruvian Amazon last April. I took $460 with me. It doesn’t seem so much, but with it we were able to: outfit 48 kids in the Belen area of Iquitos with school supplies, provide medical and other care for a baby howler monkey whose mother was killed and provide for installation of screens on all the houses in a remote community on the Yavari River that has serious malaria problems.

The idea is to spread the word, share some tales of the road, and expand this “friends” group. Maybe others will create their own projects.

This blog is a place where The Friends Project can “live.” I’ll be updating it first with where the first round of donations went, and then with tales from the road and photos and interesting links, so visit often. Feel free to comment and talk with each other. Soon, you can visit my journalism Web site (see link for Lens and Pens at right) to see more photos and stories about the places I travel, and where we’ve donated money, that aren’t directly related to The Friends Project.

-Kris

Cappuchin