Living Heart Peru

About us

Living Heart Peru, founded in 2007, is a registered Peruvian charity and is eligible for donations. We work with vulnerable populations in the highland communities above Peru's Sacred Valley to implement sustainable agriculture, nutrition, health and education initiatives. We are not affiliated with any religion or profit-making organization, and maintain a commitment to operate with transparency, integrity and sensitivity.

Our Vision is to become an internationally recognized, transparent NGO focusing on children; renowned for our integrity, consistency, compassion and holistic approach in all aspects of our work within the remote Andean communities.

Our Mission is to help develop self-sustaining agriculture, health and education initiatives in remote, impoverished highland communities above Peru's Sacred Valley. In order to support vulnerable children, individuals both men and women and the elderly, we employ a community based holistic approach and encourage partnerships with the community members that empower them to make our initiatives thrive.

Our work
• Education: Living Heart Peru provides community primary schools with discretional basic educational supplies to ensure that every child can attend school for the full scholastic year and receive a basic education. We also provide volunteer teachers to support the local teachers and to teach art, drama and physical recreation activities.
• Health: Living Heart Peru collects new and secondhand clothes and provides regular donations of warm items to the communities. Living Heart provides a basic first aid kit and medical supplies to the school director, for the benefit of the children and the wider community, with instructions on dosage and when to administer each medicine. Living Heart Peru also organizes itinerant medical clinics with the help of local doctors and foreign volunteer doctors and nurses, who bring their own medical supplies. In addition, we are looking to introduce regular dental care within our communities. We also require the school to medicate the children regularly with local anti-parasitical herbs provided by the parents, which are given to the children bi-weekly in the form of infusions. Finally, Living Heart Peru conducts annual weight and height checks to monitor the growth of the children, and track their development.
• Contraception: Living Heart Peru provides sexual health, hygiene and education workshops in all of our communities and offers pill and injection-based contraceptives to all women who request them.
• Sustainable Agriculture: Living Heart Peru supports vulnerable children, women and men in the most disadvantaged highland communities of the Sacred Valley. Living Heart Peru advocates the right of every child to health, education and a brighter future. Our aim is to develop holistic, sustainable projects that work together with the community in the areas of Nutrition, Health, Education and Sustainable Agriculture. Through working collaboratively alongside the most disadvantaged local people we aim to create a more sustainable, long-term solution. Living Heart Peru is not a hand-out organisation. We empower local children, women and men to help themselves and help others. We operate with integrity and compassion, using local produce and solutions, keeping it simple to achieve results.

Io Sophia Gillhuber is the Executive Director of Living Heart Peru.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.