Ayni - Today For You, Tomorrow For Me

 Piuraperu     Peru

http://ayni.footboot.net     << Visit Website

Coverage:  International

Categories:  Children, Community Service, Educational, Ethnic, Hunger/Poverty, [ View All ]

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Ayni - Today For You, Tomorrow For Me Charity Profile

Ayni survives on donations from people like you. Every little bit makes a difference.

Ayni is a very small grassroots organization based in Piura, Nothern Peru. Its founder Margie Orsi, a high school teacher from Markham, Ontario, Canada began the organization in 2001. What started out as one individual's small and innocent attempt at impacting positive change on a tiny part of this planet, quickly turned into an organized group effort of dedicated volunteers from around the world.

The word Ayni comes from the language of an old native culture called Aymara based in Peru and Bolivia, and it means 'today for you, tomorrow for me.' Ayni is based on the idea of reiprocity: working together as a group for the group, a sharing of ideas and resources, helping one another and having a sense of responsibility for each other.

Ayni's work takes place in Alto de los Mores, a small isolated rural village of Indigenous Peruvians. Our organization works together with this community to alleviate some of the major barriers of living in extreme poverty. Our role is multifaceted and continues to grow within the community from women's development projects, to small micro-credit schemes, as well as encouraging and supporting education and knowledge of human rights throughout the community.

Ayni - Today For You, Tomorrow For Me Volunteer Information

We don't look at experience, level of Spanish or education as much as we do on personality, interest and intensions. Age and education have nothing to do with your ability to make an effort and contribution to Ayni. It is, however, very important that volunteers are stable enough themselves to be able to give and generate energy to the projects and the people around them, rather than absorbing it themselves. The environment that we work in is not the place for volunteers to deal with their own traumatic experiences: we have to put all our energy into the projects and maintain a positive spirit within the team. Having said that, of course we care about the well being of our volunteers: if it weren't for them the projects couldn't keep running, and we help each other out within the team.

So, it's more about who you are and what you want to achieve than what experience you have. If you feel passionate about what we do and you are flexible and happy both to teach and help out wherever needed in the community; think you can adapt without greater difficulty to a diverse culture such as Peru's; if you have an open mind and see a possibility rather than a problem; and if you are happy to work in a team as well as independent enough to take your own initiatives: then you are what we are looking for.