Children’s Fund of Willka T’ika

The Children’s Fund of Willka T’ika was established in 1995 by Carol Cumes and today the fund assists school-aged Inka and Quechua children from a variety of isolated mountain communities near Sacred Valley in Peru.

Outside of the main cities, like Lima and Cusco, Peru’s population is very poor. There are no social services and little help is received from the government. The locals survive by growing crops, but the farther away one gets from the main villages, the more modest, difficult, and poor the living becomes.

In this setting, schooling for children is typically not an option either because of sheer lack of schools in the vicinity or because the children have an early obligation to start working in the field. Lack of proper schooling coupled with an influx of tourism into Peru has led not only to a growing population of poorly educated, but also a gradual diminishing of Inka and Quechua traditions.

The Children’s Fund has been instrumental in helping provide education and culture preservation to these communities. The Fund began by supporting the Patakancha community, which initially had only two devoted teachers and a meager shack for a classroom of 20 children. With the help of the Fund, a modern school has been built, as have housing for the teachers, and a beautifully equipped library. Since 1996, the Patakancha school has grown into a full modern school with higher education, a hostel, and many agricultural programs.

In addition, the Children’s Fund continues to support a hot meal program for the children who attend school. Many of the students have a 1-2 hour walk to and from school and for a good number of them, the hot meal they have while at school is their only meal of the day. It only takes $1500 USD a year to provide daily hot lunches for all of the students as well as for all of the teachers. We, at the Foundation for Freedom have committed to meeting this need. Donations above and beyond this amount will be used to provide equipment, blankets, heaters for teachers, clothing and school supplies to Patakancha and other area schools. Also, each year, Children’s Fund helps to finance treats for Children’s Day celebrations and offers transport and food for special art and theater events held in Urubamba.

Carol Cumes hopes to extend the scope of The Willka T’ika Children’s Fund this year by building a medical healing center that will provide much needed, free health care to women and children in the nearby Andean communities.