- Every child deserves a chance to thrive.
- Preventive health and personal safety opportunities.
- Education is key for growth and development.
About Bemelsa
In 1976 Señor Jose Hernandez sensed a need in Grocio Prado to provide food and a safe place for the children who were in need. As many Peruvians do, Señor Hernandez wanted to give thanks to Melchorita Saravia. The Hernandez family began, with a staff of volunteers, to provide the much needed food for the children and the Monks that served in the Parroquia San Pedro de Grocio Prado church. The Comedor previously was housed in an additional area of the church.
Several years ago the Hernandez family built a new building for the Comedor and now we have this beautiful building dedicated to the memory of Melchorita Saravia who worked tirelessly to feed and comfort Chinchana's in need.
As we open our doors for more and more programs, we are seeing more and more need in the community. Creating programs and activities that help children build self esteem and self-worth are our primary goals, right along with safety and nourishment.
The mission of the Comedor is to nourish the bodies and minds of the children and families of Grocio Prado through nutrition, education, and information. While the needs of Grocio Prado grow we must keep in mind the practices that have become habitual and custom in the culture. These practices must be addressed. Whether those practices include systematic and continuous school absences and drop-outs, abuse of women and children, a lack of creative arts within the schools, an absence of the use of technology as a tool for personal and economic growth, or the enabling of women to lead full and productive lives, they must all be addressed in a timely and culturally sensitive manner.
Our Family here at the Comedor De Melchorita Saravia is made up of our amazing Volunteers, staff, and our beautiful families!
Special Volunteers
Señora Maria has been volunteering every day for almost 30 years. She has raised all of her 9 children while coming here and cooking for the children of Grocio Prado. She is truly the backbone of our organization and keeps us clicking along everyday. Whether it is 100 or 300 children and adults to feed, she can make it happen.
Señora Margarita has been helping Señora Maria for over 10 years. Everyday she works around Grocio Prado selling alfalfa for the local farm animals and then makes her way here to cook for our legions of children and adults! Her son Kike is a frequent face here and is in secondary school in Chincha.
Staff
Señor Vicente is our Night Guard. He has been sleeping here for over 3 years, making sure our building and our volunteers are safe at night. Vicente and Señora Maria and their family have been amazing supports for the mission of the Comedor, willing to do whatever it takes to make life better for our children and adults.
Señora Selene is our Director and Social Worker in the same time. Her job is a very important one. She keeps tabs on all of our families, trying to make sure their needs are met and that all of our kids are in school, fed, and prepared to learn and make progress towards a healthy and happy life.
Señorita Julie was our director for 2 years in Perú and all of the kids at the comedor and the community appreciate everything she has done for them. Now she is supporting us from the States as a member of the Board of Directors. She is dedicated to giving the children every opportunity to live lives full of success, education, and healthy choices!
Volunteers
Our programming depends on dedicated volunteers. We are fortunate that volunteers from all over the world want to come and help our children succeed. The opportunities for our volunteers range from working with our Social Worker to conduct home visits to creating programs to helping out with the daily operations of our center to even helping us to continually raise funds to keep our organization going.
Ena joins us from Austria and Bosnia. She started volunteering for us in November 2010. Ena has an amazing amount of energy and has jumped very quickly into our fray of activities and happenings. She was teaching a dance class, having a story time several days a week, helping in the computer classes, and teaching art classes. Since October 2011 Ena came back to us as a Co-Director to support our Director Selene in all the organizational tasks and generally pitching in whereever she can!
Past Volunteers
Alana was a Peace Corp Volunteer. We were really lucky that she was here to help the community as a Peace Corp Business Volunteer. She has taught English classes, dance classes, business computer courses, and worked with artisans and community members in different capacities. Alana was the key ingredient in our successful health and medical campaigns and in our organizational tasks.
Jose Carlos was our Computer teacher. He volunteered to teach a morning class 2 mornings a week and also teached an evening class. His classes were very popular!One of his students, who is also a parent here at the Comedor, became employed for the first time at one of the local businesses! Rue attended several different courses that Jose Carlos taught and we are very excited for her!!
Señora Rosa began helping in our kitchen 16 years ago. Her son Jaime is 11 years old and Señora Rosa was helping even before she had children of her own!
Allyson came to us from Kentucky, USA. She was working primarily with organizational tasks and pitching in wherever she is needed!
With our summer camps keeping us all busy, the extra hands were vital! She was also teaching English and helping out in the kitchen.
Miranda has come to us as a recent graduate from the University of Pittsburgh where she majored in Biology. She has been a great addition to the comedor fami
ly. Miranda was our first Science Teacher!She has started a successful afterschool science class for kids of the comedor. This is so great, because most kids in the community will never attend science classes in their schools for lack of funding. She also started our very first music class where she teaches basic music concepts on recorders that the comedor received through donations. Apart from these projects Miranda was tutoring, and in general covered by her adoringing fans ... thank you!
Nicole is a volunteer that came to us from Arizona in May 2011. As a Psychology major from Chapman University, her main projects are creating a support group for mothers of the comedor and working closely with the development of our Chicas Bemelsas group. She also has found time to tutor, lead a theater class, and is becoming famous throughout the community for her baking skills.
Spotlight
Pedro is an eight year old boy in our Comedor with an amazing amount of energy and never stays still. In school he had a lot of problems and he stopped going at all and started washing cars. So we started our one-on-one after school tutoring with our volunteers and in the beginning it was really hard to work with him. He was not used to somebody taking care of just him as he has nine siblings. Now he is going to school every day and is literally in all of our after school programs like Music, Club Internacional, Tutoring and Theater. He is making great progress in Math but we still have to work on his reading skills. We know that our volunteers already made a big difference in his life, just by giving the extra time and energy he needs. We are so proud of Pedrito, even though it has not always been easy with him.
Ludoteca
Togehter with our volunteers it was possible to open our Ludoteca in the Comedor. The Ludoteca is our Preschool for our little ones between 2-3 years old. The children combine learning with play. We see our Ludoteca program as an essential preparation for children prior to entering the
Kindergarten year. There are so many social and developmental skills that are developed and strengthened in the Preschool class in order to maximize the Kindergarten year and indeed the elementary and secondary years. We want children to become independent, self-confident, curious learners who can work well with others. We're teaching them how to learn, not just in preschool, but all through their lives.
Computer Classes
Our children participate in many free after school
activities at the Comedor such as Computer Classes. With our new volunteer Carlos from the nearby institute we can offer the kids one morning class and 4 afternoon classes two days a week. The classes are really popular and always full as we just have 8 computers. They learn the parts of a computer, how to use a
mouse and basic Windows navigations. After they learn how to use Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. In the end they start using the Internet and basic search tools and techniques.
Madres Bemelsa
We created a fun and and active social group that empasizes supporting our mothers of the Comedor. They meet every second weekend to talk and work on self esteem and self awareness. The group offers support as well as being a great resource of info for each other. They should come and be able to lean on one another and talk about their problems. To feel more comfortable they always start with preparing a cake our something sweet in our Comedor kitchen.
Chica’s Bemelsa is a group of girls that get together a few times a month and work on self esteem and self awareness. Our goal with the group is to help the girls realize how important being a self confident woman is to their future. The group enjoys activities and visits from specialists around the community that focus on just them and the issues important to girls.Topics such as health and life decisions, sexual health, kindness, compassion, education, and self-esteem are covered with the girls.
We offer many more after school activities every week such as Theater, Math, Grammar, our Dance Mentoring Program, and Yoga.