The Rurapuk Project
The Rurapuk project is a community centre in Paraiso Alto, a very poor part of Lima. This area has no running water, and no sewage system. About 25% of the people do not have electricity and most families live in one-room shacks with dirt floors. The people who don’t have electricity use candles, or buy it from a neighbor using an illegal connection. There are no doctors, hospitals, or clinics in the immediate area and there are no parks or green areas.

"The Comedor", as it is affectionately called, is run by the Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT – a not for profit organization) and has two permanent programs - The Rurapuk Hot Lunch Program and the Rurapuk Mothers. The Rurapuk Hot Lunch Program provides hot meals to nutritionally at risk children in a very poor area of Lima called Paraiso Alto; Rurapuk Mothers is a sewing collective which provides employment and helps to empower poor women. The members of Rurapuk Mothers receive a fare wage and profits are reinvested back into the projects. In Quechua, the language of the ancient Incas, Rurapuk means “people who help each other”.

Lima and suburbs	Street vendor in Lima

Peru Today

Peru is hailed as one of Latin America’s economic success stories. Its economy’s rapid growth (the fastest in the region in 2002) reflects the profits of a small elite, but eclipses the misery of the majority. More than half of all Peruvians subsist on less than $1.25 a day.

Lima is Peru’s capital city and is home to at least 8 million people. Most of these 8 million have migrated to Lima in the last 30 years to escape the severe poverty of Peru’s highland regions. Yet in Lima’s poorer areas a stunning 90% do not have access to health services, 59% are not connected to the piped water and sewerage system and 23% do not have electric power. As many as 25% of the children are malnourished.

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