Carnival Winners for The Colour of Hope!

Jessica and Rosa Batten-Stevens, aged 10 and 8, from Ottery St Mary, Devon, have been taking part in this year's East Devon Link Carnivals in aid of The Colour of Hope. They are a walking pair called "Late for a Date" and have participated in 9 carnivals so far, winning a stunning total of 8 Firsts and 1 Third Prize! Many local residents and businesses have kindly sponsored the girls, taking their current sum to an amazing £330! With the last carnival in November and more sponsors coming in all the time, they expect their final total to be even greater. If you’d like to sponsor the girls please contact mbattenstevens@yahoo.com

Contemporary Art Exhibition in aid of The Colour of Hope

Local Devon artists, Adam Bunce, Greg Ramsden, Dick Smith and Ben Yates are holding a Dartmoor Contemporary Art Exhibition at Haytor, Dartmoor, on Fri 14^th – Sun 16^th December, 9am – 5pm. Original paintings, photographs, prints, cards and gifts will be on display and tea and mince pies will be served. 5% of all sales will go to The Colour of Hope! From the bottom Haytor car park follow signs for the Broadleas Centre and for more information please email adzbunce@hotmail.com

Easysearch Total Update

Our Easysearch total has now reached £13.80! That's enough to buy a main meal for 25 young people. Easysearch is a highly effective way to support The Colour of Hope at absolutely no cost to you! See Sept 27th entry for more details.

Easysearch Total Update

Our Easysearch total has now reached £12.20! That's enough for over 3 weeks of accommodation for a young person. Easysearch is a highly effective way to support The Colour of Hope at absolutely no cost to you! See Sept 27th entry for more details.

Helping former street kids in Lima, Peru

Peruvian government takes drastic measures to ensure 2007 census success

Tomorrow, Sunday 21st October, a census will be carried out countrywide in Peru. Its purpose is to identify and gain better knowledge of the population distribution and their level of education, birth and infant mortality rates, housing and the materials used for construction and problem areas, such as towns with no access to running water, drainage or electricity. The information gathered will help to improve the country’s social aid programmes, hopefully meaning that more support will reach the areas where it is most needed.

Therefore, in part, this is very good news. However, in order to carry out the census, the government has issued a complete ban of all forms of transport nationwide! The ban will last from 8am to 6pm, meaning that between those hours there will be absolutely no buses, taxis, private cars or other forms of transport allowed on the road. People found outside will be asked to return home until 6pm. The same happened in 1993, resulting in thousands of people across the country being arrested and fined, simply for leaving their homes! Fortunately since then it has been agreed that this is actually against the law and against the right to freedom, so this time the authorities do not have the power to arrest or fine anyone, but they will still “recommend” people return home.

The entire country being ordered to stay shut in their homes all day just for a census seems absurd to me, and probably does to most other Westerners too. Other countries seem to manage to complete their census without having to shut the entire population inside! But quite aside from it being absurd, it is also preventing many Pervians from going to work. Most people in the West think of Sunday as a day of rest, but in Peru it is just one more working day for the vast majority of people. They need to work 7 days a week in order to bring in enough money for their families; the idea of a day off is a luxury. So for these people the census is a loss of income, perhaps meaning that their children go hungry that day.

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On the other hand, some Peruvians have explained to me that due to the lack of cooperation amongst the people, the results of the national census have not shown an acurate reflection of the reality. This in turn, has meant less effective social aid programmes. In order to combat this non-cooperation and improve aid programmes, the government has had to take some drastic measures. I’d be interested to know what other people think about this issue. Please feel free to leave comments on this blog entry.

Easysearch Total Update

Our Easysearch total has now reached £10.17! That's enough for over 2 weeks of accommodation for a young person. Easysearch is a highly effective way to support The Colour of Hope at absolutely no cost to you! See Sept 27th entry for more details.

The Colour of Hope's Domain Name

We've now reserved The Colour of Hope's very own domain name - http://www.thecolourofhope.org/! This is the first step towards building The Colour of Hope's website, which we will start doing over the next few weeks. There's nothing on there at the moment, but I'll let you know once we start uploading material. If you have a suggestion about the website please feel free to leave a comment on this blog entry.

WebSpanish becomes our first Peruvian corporate sponsor

WebSpanish, an online Spanish learning programme based in Lima, has made it's first donation to The Colour of Hope! It has agreed to continue this support on a monthly basis for the near future. A big thank you to everyone at WebSpanish!

Falling exchange rates and rising prices cause alarm across Peru

The Dollar to Nuevo Sol (local Peruvian currency) exchange rate has crashed from 3.15 to 2.96 in the space of days. This means that for every $100 exchanged, people are receiving 19 Nuevo Soles fewer - the equivalent of 19 bus fares or about 4 average restaurant meals. This is extremely worrying for many local businesses who hold bank accounts in dollars and citizens whose monthly wages are paid in dollars.

The Peruvian government recently stated that the dollar has devalued worldwide, not just in Peru, and that therefore there is no reason for concern. This has done little to calm the Peruvian people however; in the 1980’s the current President, Alan Garcia, froze all bank accounts held in dollars!

At the same time, prices are beginning to rise – bread has almost doubled in price over the last few months and other basic food stuffs, such as eggs, have gone up too. What with Alan Garcia back as President, people are worried that they will suffer again the terrible hyperinflation of his 1980’s government, which was worse than that of post Nazi Germany in the late 40’s. People are scared for their savings, their livelihoods and their future.

The devaluation of the dollar and rise in prices has affected The Colour of Hope too – it means that for the near future we will need to spend more to achieve our aims. It also means that the young people we help are even more in need of aid than before – rising prices and falling exchange rates are worrying enough for those who are lucky enough to have jobs; for the unemployed they’re devastating.

Easysearch Total Update

Our Easysearch total has now reached £8.59! That-s enough to buy 15 young people a main meal.
Easysearch is a highly effective way to support The Colour of Hope at absolutely no cost to you! See Sept 27th entry for more details.

Easysearch & Easyfundraising Totals

To date, we've raised a whopping £24.55 for The Colour of Hope just from shopping online and searching the internet!! If you haven’t already done so, please take a look at Easyfundraising and Easysearch – they’re both highly effective ways to support The Colour of Hope at absolutely no cost to you!

See Sept 27th entries for more details.