“Pasacalle”: International Women’s Day in Trujillo

Every year international women’s day is held on the 8^th March. It is an opportunity to celebrate past achievements and highlight the continuing global struggle for women’s rights and equality.

This year in Trujillo various groups and individuals took part in the occasion by joining together for a demonstration that led through the centre of the city. Sixty mothers from the SKIP programme, along with many children and volunteers marched on behalf of SKIP. Thanks to the “Libertad” bus company a free bus service was arranged to pick up the mothers and children from the SKIP office in the morning and take them to the Plaza de Armas (the city’s main square) where thousands gathered for the demonstration.

It was an exciting occasion, as many of the children and mothers very rarely get a chance to visit the city centre, especially with such a festival spirit in the air. The many different political and social groups in attendance joined together to protest against the culture of ‘machismo’ and sexual discrimination that are still prevalent forces in Peruvian society. There was live music and clowns for entertainment and after the demonstration a speech underlining the political importance of the day was given by a representative of the MINDES (Women and Social development Minister)

Having fun during the summer !!

During the long summer holiday, which runs between January and early March, SKIP organised a seven week summer-school programme that involved amongst other things, traditional dance, drama, music, football and English classes. All manner of workshops were available the children to try their hands at. They could each chose between 2 and 3 workshops, with three hours of lessons a week per workshop. Professional coaches in dance and football came to work with the children and Joseph McCullagh, our volunteer from Ireland, ran a very successful English class, which saw the emergence of one or two very promising linguists.

A party was held on the last Friday of February, to mark the end of the holidays and an enjoyable summer school programme. The location was a recreational complex not too far away from the SKIP office in Rio Seco. It was a chance for the children to exhibit some of the new talents they had learnt over the past seven weeks. There was a display of art works, a dramatic performance, some short speeches in English and a volleyball competition. This was followed by a sack race for volunteers, in which Joshua Allsup - a Peace Corps volunteer, who has been volunteering with us for the last two years - won a hard earnest first place for America. Afterwards the children played and swam in the pool or chilled out in the shade, and fun team building activities were organised for the mothers.

Thank you Micky !

On the 18th January Micky Bride successfully completed the Dubai Marathon raising £953 for SKIP.

In the heat of Dubai he completed the 26 mile course in just 4hrs 24 minutes.

On behalf of everybody at SKIP we would like to say a big thank you to Micky and his colleagues at Worlds Apart Travel in Cheltenham who have provided great support to SKIP in the last two years.

Micky Bride marathons for SKIP in Dubai

On January 18, 2008 Micky Bride will be running the Dubai Marathon to raise funds for SKIP. Micky works for Worlds Apart Travel with whom SKIP have forged a good relationship over the past two years. He will brave the heat to complete the extremely challenging 26+ miles. If you would like to sponsor Micky and thus help SKIP, please visit www.justgiving.com/mickybride.

Good luck Micky from all at SKIP!