Intiwawa, in Arequipa (Peru): a 100% useful super NGO, dedicated to education, empowering women and health

A child opens the front door of Casa Intiwawa

Intiwawa drawn on the wall of one of the classrooms at Casa Intiwawa

Little girls in pink hugging each other

Dulce and her friend smiling and dressed in pink

The table football, a central feature of Casa Intiwawa

Last training session by Daniel before the escape game with improvised fake weapons

One of the association's two dogs lying quietly in front of a rearing horse

A student's presentation sheet hanging in a classroom

Leah working at a school desk in the courtyard.

Intro

During my trip to Peru in February 2025, I was lucky enough to spend a few days volunteering with the NGO Intiwawa, at the Casa Intiwawa centre in Mollebaya, a small town near Arequipa, a magnificent Peruvian colonial town and one of the most beautiful cities in the country.

I had found this NGO while doing some research ahead of my trip, and its areas of intervention seemed particularly relevant to me: education, women's emancipation and health, both physical and mental.

As I was there during the summer holidays in Peru (which start at Christmas and generally end in March), the association's usual activities were replaced by the Vacaciones Utiles (Useful Holidays) programme, a series of activities offered to pupils in the spirit of a day-care centre.

I loved the experience, meeting such endearing, joyful and malicious children despite the extremely difficult conditions in which they live, each with his or her own personality, from the most well-behaved seeking the teacher's approval, til9l the most rebellious and mischievous making (nice) mistakes, forging real friendships between them.

The NGO, whose name means "Children of the Sun" in Quechua, certainly lives up to its name!

Portraits of children from Casa Intiwawa - a teenage girl sitting in the square

Portraits of children from Casa Intiwawa - a young boy in a classroom

Portrait of children from Casa Intiwawa: Gael in profile in front of the table football table

Portrait of children from Casa Intiwawa: a young boy dressed up for the shooting of the short film

Portrait of children from Casa Intiwawa: Rubi

Portrait of children from Casa Intiwawa: the two inseparable friends Dulce and her friend in pink

I also met a super-motivated staff (the "profes", for "profesor") who are creative, committed, generous and resourceful, always ready to help the children and teenagers and offer them fun and original activities!

During these few days, I observed, listened, discussed, recorded a little - and photographed a lot! Of course, I also tried to help out with various tasks whenever I could. Believe it or not, I've even cooked (yes, yes, I swear... well, spreading jam on bread and peeling eggs!!). I've coded a message for a home-made escape game. I took a portrait of Leah and Luis (the new general manager and chairman) who needed a nice photo for the association's annual report and website.

The following article and photos are the fruit of a few days spent so quickly at Intiwawa, and of my discussions with Leah and Luis, but also with the volunteers (special thanks to Daniel, Miranda and Chris) and all the children, who are so endearing...

The areas of action of the NGO Intiwawa in Peru

The association has 4 areas of action:

1) Education (Yachay - knowledge in Quechua)

This programme mainly involves helping children and teenagers aged between 6 and 15 with their schoolwork, as well as maths, English, sport and art lessons.

In 2024, 65 pupils were helped thanks to this programme.

2) Women's work (Warmi - women in Quechua), also known as ‘madres luchadoras’.

An activity has been launched more recently for mothers: a workshop to learn how to weave, the aim being for the women to be able to generate economic resources and for this activity to be self-sufficient. There is also a virtuous circle, with many apprentice mothers in turn becoming teachers for other apprentice mothers, and so on.

The madres (mothers) acquire a very high level of skill in hand knitting and also train in machine weaving and crochet. They make fabrics, clothes, such as the chullo (the traditional Peruvian hat), small llamas (which tourists are so fond of!!), which they then sell to shops or hotels (for example at the luxurious Hotel Katari, Plaza de Armas in Arequipa), or at events such as the Arequipa Festival in June or the FIA (Feria Internacional de Arequipa) in August.

A total of 611 products were sold in 2024.

3)    Psychology  (KUSI)

Thanks to partnerships with local universities, students run weekly workshops for young people in the Yachay programme, and pupils who feel the need attend individual sessions with the association's psychologist.

100 pupils and parents benefited from the psychologist's services in 2024.

4)    Health : QALI Thanks to this programme, medical examinations are offered free of charge at Casa Intiwawa to students and their families, and preventive events against diseases (e.g. uterine cancer) are organised in partnership with a local clinic.

Intiwawa in 4 key dates

• 2005 creation of Intiwawa in Mollebaya by Lionel, a psychologist, and his friends

• 2007 creation of the German entity Intiwawa E.V.

• 2012 construction of the Casa Intiwawa community centre

• 2023 second floor of the Casa Intiwawa community centre with a sewing room for the Warmi project (and plans to open a library)

  
  

The team

Intiwawa is what it is thanks to the boundless dedication, energy and expertise of a golden team (mostly volunteers), both local and international!

Intiwawa has 6 employees :

• Leah (managing director, recently arrived, American from Chicago, used to working in Spanish - even in the USA she worked with Mexicans, and has lived in Colombia...)

• Luis (Chairman, who also has a part-time job on the side)

• Isadora (the cook, who lives in Casa Intiwawa)

• Claudia in finance

• A psychologist

• Shirley (marketing student) for marketing / comm / social networks

Portrait of Leah, the managing director of Intiwawa

Portrait of Luis, the president of Intiwawa

And, of course, an incredible team of volunteers!

The local volunteers include many psychology, education and social work students sent by local universities. Or other students from Arequipa: like Christian (a finance student) or Shirley (a marketing student).

Or even professionals working in the social sector (like Daniel, who studied finance and has been a scout since childhood, and who has recently started working in project management for a Peruvian NGO responsible for training people in rural mining areas).

Many of the international volunteers come from Germany, thanks to a well-oiled German volunteering programme and organisations that send large numbers of volunteers to Peru and many other developing countries.

Dulce on Miranda's shoulders

Daniel encouraging several children before a test

Daniel in class and the children raising their hands to give the answer

Rubi in Shirley's arms

Being a volunteer at Intiwawa also means being able to train and acquire new skills. In 2024, volunteers were able to take part in training courses in first aid for children, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (provided by Daniel, who learnt this from his scout training) and educational workshops...

Who are the families helped by Intiwawa?

The families helped live in Mollebaya, where Casa Intiwawa is based.

Most of the inhabitants of this small town and of the families helped have informal jobs (which, by definition, are unstable and offer no job security) in bricklaying, a physically demanding trade. Many of the fathers also work in the (many) mines in the region...

Many families face significant difficulties, such as financial instability, domestic violence and limited access to resources and quality education.

Children often help their parents with their work, which deprives them of time to go to school and exposes them to potentially dangerous situations, with a negative impact on their mental and emotional development.

Many mothers are victims of domestic violence, but being financially dependent on their husbands, they often see no alternative but to stay with them in spite of everything. The children are also victims of domestic violence.

At Intiwawa, the relationship established with the family is long-term: the children who come to Intiwawa have often been there for several years.

Intiwawa is also a family affair: some attendees are brothers and sisters, others cousins, and so on.

But of course there are rules to be respected: if a child misses too long, parents are warned that they may not be able to come afterwards to make room for someone who comes more regularly, as the waiting list is very long...

Vacaciones Utiles activities

A sort of day-care centre, the programme replaces the Yachay programme during the summer holidays.

Every morning from Monday to Friday, until 12.30pm, activities were organised for the thirty or so children present, divided into 3 groups of 10 per age group (6-8, 9-11, 12-15), with 3 workshops per group:

Art: plastic arts, theatre...

For example, the students had to make a sort of collective living movie scene per group, and the other groups had to guess what scene they were trying to create! We had to guess the famous Titanic scene, and it was great fun! All organised by Daniel, who's always full of great ideas for workshops, as well as ideas and advice on how to help them)

Free interpretation of Titanic in a living tableau in theatre class

A child participating in a living tableau in theatre class

Sport: dodgeball or other universal games in the square next door (the football pitch was unfortunately flooded because of the rainy season when I was there). All this in the midst of stray dogs playing at the same time as the children, a merry mess that makes me love Latin America so much!

A teenager playing Red light, green light

Gael on parallel bars

Three children playing hangman

Portrait of children on parallel bars

The slide is more fun upside down

A teenager goalkeeper who takes his role seriously

Cinema: a film was prepared by each group, with hand-made costumes and accessories, all filmed using a smartphone. The films were inspired by Tom & Jerry (for the little ones), Fast & Furious for the mediums and Mathilde (Roal Dahl) for the older children.

At every break, the students gather around the table football in the centre of the Casa, a real meeting place for groups, young and older. Sometimes with a ball patched together with scotch tape!

Close-up of the table football and its patched-up ball

Close-up of the table football at Casa Intiwawa

Three children playing table football

Each Friday, a different activity was organised.

On the Friday I was there, Daniel organised an escape game in one of the classrooms at Casa Intiwawa, using whatever resources were available! And frankly, it was a complete success!

I was blown away, and very amused to see the children getting into the game, crawling around with their dummy weapons (from crutches or swimming pool “toys” turned into assault rifles or squares used as revolvers) to enter a dark room where coded messages were scattered around for them to decrypt and which would allow them to get out of the room...

The whole thing was set to a soundtrack of war sounds unearthed from You Tube and played loud and clear on giant speakers... with even the famous Mission : Impossible soundtrack playing at the end when there were only a few seconds left to get out...

It really felt like it (and the students believed it too)!

Preparing a coded message for the escape game

Final training session before the escape game

A second coded message for the escape game placed on the desk

The older children get ready to start the escape game with fake weapons

On their way to the escape game, fake weapons in hand

Crawling into the escape game room

12:30: snack time

Then, at around 12:30, the children were given something to eat, again with maximum resourcefulness!

Either something cooked (a soup prepared by Christian, Isadora's replacement cook in the summer, who managed the feat of concocting a delicious chicken / egg / noodle soup with even Chinese onion for 30 people, or a yoghurt cake with orange...

Or a snack that wasn't cooked, like on the 3rd day when I was visiting and we ran out both of water (which happens regularly, especially during the rainy season) and gas (the tank was finished, an unfortunate coincidence). So we decided to make strawberry jam/butter sandwiches (melted in the microwave) with sandwich bread that would soon perish.

Christian carrying a tray with the desserts of the day

Miranda carrying a tray with slices of delicious orange yoghurt cake

Rubi in front of her slice of cake and fruit

A child finishing his soup at Casa Intiwawa

Portrait of Dulce enjoying her cake at Casa Intiwawa

Portrait of a girl in front of her dessert at Casa Intiwawa

Portrait of two boys enjoying their dessert in a classroom at Casa Intiwawa

Table with around twenty delicious soups prepared with love for the children at Casa Intiwawa

At Casa Intiwawa, there are also educational elements to help children adopt the right habits, such as posters on the wall laying the foundations for learning to live in a group and around non-violent communication (see the red/orange/green ‘traffic light’ where everyone has to position themselves according to their state of stress). Or acquiring the reflex of washing one's hands after going to the toilet and before eating (not always easy, unfortunately, because in periods of heavy rain - particularly during the rainy season, which lasts roughly from the end of December to the end of March each year - the water supply is often cut off in the region... but fortunately there are reserves of rainwater stored in cisterns) etc...

Explanation sheet for the fire used to indicate how upset someone is in a classroom at Casa Intiwawa

Sheet with red/orange/green fire used to indicate emotional state in a classroom at Casa Intiwawa

Explanation sheet for the stars and what they mean in a classroom at Casa Intiwawa

A few anecdotes about the children that speak volumes

As I've already said, I was really touched by the children and teenagers at the centre.

Each in their own way, with their own personality, moved me.

Nevertheless, here are a few anecdotes about some of the children that are fairly representative of what I felt. And they make you think, and put things into perspective.

One of the pupils, Roy, is deaf and dumb*. I didn't even realise it straight away, because the children play with him so easily and with such kindness (in the true sense of this now overused term). The pupils mime what they can and, on the whole, communication is good. For the rest, he acts by mimicry and follows the others (e.g. to play the escape game etc). And it's going well! And many activities don't require that much hearing or talking: he loves playing table football, for example. I was intrigued at first by his penetrating gaze: I then understood better why this gaze was an even more important way of communicating. Especially as, unfortunately, he hadn't had the opportunity to learn sign language. And apparently his father was also deaf and dumb, and so was his sister.

*I learned from Leah a few months after my visit that, in the meantime, the situation had developed very positively for Roy: thanks to a doctor specialising in hearing disorders, brother of a volunteer trainee at Intiwawa, Roy was able to have a hearing test, which revealed that he could hear partially in his left ear. With the help of teachers who taught him sounds and sight-reading, he was able to pronounce his first word last May, ‘taza’ (cup in english)

Roy leaning on the table football table at Casa Intiwawa

Roy eating his soup at Casa Intiwawa

Roy and his Peruvian football team shirt with his friends at the table football at Casa Intiwawa

Roy on the parallel bars

Another pupil, a teenager, slipped in the mud while playing football. His shirt and shorts were full of it. He started crying. At first I found his reaction to what had just happened surprisingly excessive. Then I realised that what was making him cry was the fear of being hit by his mother because of the shirt he'd soiled - even though he didn't mean to. This sadly reminded me that domestic violence is very common in Peru, especially in the poorest communities like Mollebaya.

A third pupil, usually so cheerful, started crying because he really couldn't finish his soup. He only had a spoonful left, but he couldn't get through it. But it seemed to him that one of the volunteers had ordered him to finish his soup so that he could go home (which was not usually the rule: if the child really didn't seem to be able to finish, he shouldn't be forced either). This feeling of no longer understanding the rules, of having the impression that the rules of the game had changed over time, was what made him cry.

It reminded me of how difficult it is to strike the right balance between introducing children from an early age to flavours that are less obvious than junk food (such as salchipapa (many children's favourite, a mixture of chips, chopped industrial sausage and ketchup) - such as fruit, vegetables, etc., and the fact that the children are made aware that food should not be wasted vs. the fact that they should not be forced to eat if they really don't like what they are made to eat (sometimes to the point of being traumatised by it - for my part, I was forever disgusted by spinach because of the spinach served in the canteen).

The volunteers also explained to me that the children had already been known to ‘discreetly’ throw away the food they had been served, a waste that is all the more disturbing in a country where a large proportion of the population is poor, or even very poor and can't get enough to eat. Which is obviously not acceptable.

Budget and strategic partnership

Budget

In 2024, Intiwawa received a total income of around 80,000 Peruvian soles (the equivalent of €20,000), over 90% of which came from the German branch (and its individual German and European donors in particular).

This money is used primarily to finance the Yachay project (Intiwawa's core programme), but also for administration and operating costs.

Makro: a strategic partnership

Since 2024, there has been some excellent news: the cost of buying food has fallen considerably, thanks to a mega-strategic partnership with a local supermarket chain, Makro.

This partnership represents a huge saving in costs, because feeding 30 people 5 days a week is no mean feat, and it comes at a price, as you can imagine...

Every week, Isadora (the cook) collects the stocks of products donated by these shops (often products that are about to perish, whether they are “fresh” or industrial products), then manages the stocks, drawing up the menus according to which products are likely to go out of date or spoil first.

When she collects large stocks of products that are about to perish, the children (or their parents) take the products for the whole family with them.

3, 2, 1...: help!! It's up to you...

At Intiwawa, there are many needs, and there are different ways to help, depending on what you can...

The best ways to help are :

- donations

Your donations (in soles, dollars, euros...) will be 100% useful, as 100% of donations go to their projects.

To donate, click here

If you would like to make a donation for a specific programme, administration or overheads, you can send an e-mail to director@intiwawa.com.

Donations in kind are also more than welcome: IT equipment (especially computers), food, school supplies, etc.

- Volunteering:

For volunteering, vacancies are available here

What are the requirements? You must be available for 3 months and have a level of Spanish equivalent to B1.

If you are passing through Arequipa and are available for a shorter period but would like to make yourself useful, contact them! They're always in need of people!

For coordinator positions, the requirements are more specific depending on the post, with a minimum commitment of 6 months in all cases.

Practical Info

Casa Intiwawa :

It is located in San Isidro, next to Mollebaya, 45 minutes from Arequipa.

To get there, take the T bus from the new José Luis Bustamente Y Rivero district and get off at San Isidro.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dGJPPp79DmLPtakd6

GPS coordinates : -16.496439037771726, -71.5003297058956

You won't be disappointed by these children (and adults) of the sun!