Greetings from Lima. I arrived to the sticky humid air of early Autumn in the city this morning.
We’ve been getting many requests for updates on the “happenings” in Perú. As such, here is a blog update on the happenings as we see them.
Undoubtedly you have heard the story about the frog in boiling water. The slower the temperature rises, the more the frog has lured into a sense that everything is normal—unfortunately, this false sense of security leads to the frog’s demise.
Perú is in a strange political space. Outside of a couple of focal areas in the country’s southern portion, the protests that paralyzed the country in early 2023 have stopped. The demonstrations that shocked the international community and nearly shut down the country’s economy have quelled. Many Peruvians are just tired of the frustrations of the roadblocks and supply chain disruptions.
What does this mean for the average Peruvian? Well, since there is no such thing as an average Peruvian – it means something different for everyone. However, one thing seems clear – politics, as usual, will reign. The social unrest that led to mass protests with the mandate for early elections and constitutional reform seems to have disappeared. The current administrator of President Dina Boluarte appears to be headed toward a full term – with elections not happening until 2026.
With such a polarizing political system, President Boluarte will likely have little to no beneficial impact over the next three years. The proverbial tea leaf readers of Peruvian politics anticipate little to no action on the part of the current administration; and, unfortunately, this means all of the challenges that impacted the country over the pandemic and the protracted recovery of the economy due to the political and social unrest will weigh heavily on the backs of underserved Peruvians – an estimated 60+% of the population!
This political stasis means the crippling inflation and escalating social disparity seems likely to continue . . . if not escalate. Whatever lens one chooses to look at the situation, one thing is clear: life for the underserved, undereducated, marginalized citizens of Perú – the temperature is rising and getting dangerous. The frog is boiling and does not even know it, or it is fully aware of its fate – but has no other option than to simmer in the boiling waters of its current situation.
Look, I am not implying the people of Perú are pre-destined for continued political and social strife. I certainly hope not. I am, however, saying that the situation – political distrust, social discontent, economic polarization – is becoming normalized . . . and this normalization will not be to the betterment of people living in the experience of economic poverty of social exclusion.
So, what’s next? That is hard to say. Prices for basic foodstuffs and daily staples continue to rise. Wages remain stagnant. The enormous percentage of the Peruvian workforce locked into informal employment is not abating. The water is slowly boiling.
All of this brings me to a solution. Let’s figure out a way to get the frog out of the boiling pot, and if that’s not possible, let’s find a way to turn down the heat. In practical terms, for HBI, this means working to fully prepare the families, youth, and young adults we work with to have the skills they need to navigate the complex world around them. It means continuing in our work to create models that can be used in various contexts to help people gain access to the futures they deserve. And it means continually focusing on the current and pressing, as well as the future and uncertain. For us, it means staying the course.
Andina 2023 – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneIn just a little over 24-hours we will celebrate our 11th A Bridge to Change Benefit Event at Andina Restaurant. Sure, the pandemic put a little hiccup in our plans to hold annual events at Portland’s fabulous Andina Restaurant, but we are back in stride for 2023 and looking forward to an exciting night of great food, amazing wine, loyal friends, and sharing the tremendous impacts Health Bridges has made over the past 12-months.
What makes this event so important? HBI is a donor driven NGO. Our budget, a modest $750,000, comes predominately from generous individual donors. This is by design. We knew our best chance to truly make the sort of difference we are making in the child welfare sector was through the flexibility of individual donors. Sure, we are super fortunate to have family foundation dollars to support our work – however, the vast majority of investment comes from people who believe in the work of HBI.
Talk about a humbling notion. It is beyond my ability to express in words how much it means to have so many people believe in what we are doing.
HBI’s mission is working. It is working because you believe in our work, and you are investing in us.We are also an organization building and providing collaborative models for children, youth, families, and organizations to use towards fulfilling and healthy lives for themselves and their communities. We are championing children and the communities that care for them.
We need you to continue investing in us. When you make that investment, in a small, effective, and nimble NGO, serving the needs of some of the most marginalized children in Latin America, you help us build a pathway for long-term, sustainable change. We dedicate over 92% of all monies directly into programs so that our supporting organizations worldwide will have the skills and expertise to build their own Communities of Excellence. We are becoming the behind-the-scenes champions who are helping child-welfare experts and advocates change the way children in out of parental care receive services.
In over 25-years, our mission has never wavered…we envision a world where every child has access to the life they deserve. A life of health, hope, home, and purpose.
We need individuals who want to choose HBI as THEIR NGO. We need your support to change the world . . . together. So tomorrow night, when we come together to celebrate – we are also coming together to recommit. To reconfirm our dedication to changing the way children living in orphanges, residential facilities and state-run homes receive the care and protection they deserve. We are committing to invest in their future. #BetheBridge
Lighting the Way – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneIt has been a few weeks since my last post. There is no one reason for my lapse in communication – other than the demands of a full life.
Several things have happened over the past couple of months. HBI has officially taken over the legal responsibilities for the Casa Girasoles. In addition, all the Casa Girasoles Urubamba and Ica staff transferred to employment with HBI-Perú. Finally, we are under-contract to purchase the Casa Girasoles Urubamba property and home. We only have one payment remaining, and the property is HBI’s. We are under the same due diligence for the property in Ica. Whew. That’s a lot.
Yes, that is a lot. It is not, however, a full update on all that’s going on. The most significant change is not anything but a thousand little things. Let me explain.
The city of Lima – comprised of 43 districts or communities – recently shifted from the older sepia-tone streetlights of a bygone era to LED energy-efficient streetlights. The city of Los Angeles made a similar shift back in 2016. It is a bitter-sweet change – as the sepia-tone light of the old streetlights creates a very nostalgic feeling. Alas, progress.
One problem is that transitioning from old to new technology is more than a replacement phenomenon. The growth requires a massive infrastructure shift. This shift is not going smoothly. The new LED street lights are prone to glitching and, in some neighborhoods (ours included), essentially strobe all night. So much for more recent technology.
The change that the city of Lima is going through with its switch to newer technology is the same transition HBI is undergoing. Okay, maybe not the same per se – but there are some parallels.
We are shifting from an organization predominately led by a North American team to an organization with Peruvian leadership at every level. The growth is exciting; however, we are on the cusp of a transition that brings several challenges as we build our new infrastructure. Our focus right now is to make sure we are transitioning slowly and cautiously. This means focusing on the culture of our organization and making certain everyone has the resources they need to successfully transition.
This is an exciting time for HBI. It is a time of change – and a period that will truly light the way for a brighter future for our work.
Oh, by the way – we are having a fundraiser event on September 19th at Portland’s famous Andina Restaurant. This is our return to Andina after a three-year hiatus. We would love for you to join us. You can get tickets at: A Bridge to Change 2023
Fiestas Patrias – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneToday is Peruvian Independence Day. It is a big deal in Perú. It is more than just a single-day Holiday – today, July 28th, kicks off a weekend of celebrations around the Fiestas Patrias. For a country that has gone through so much over the past few years – with the COVID pandemic, a near-catastrophic paralysis in the government, social and political protests, and the Dengue outbreak . . . this year, Fiestas Patrias is a significant time to celebrate being a Peruvian.
Perhaps more than just a time for festivity and celebration, the Fiestas Patrias is also a time to take stock and remember what matters most. For much of Perú, this will be time spent with family and friends and a lot of opportunity to celebrate the power of relationships. I was thinking about this when I opened my computer to type a Blog entry for today. I was thinking about the nearly 30 years we have been working . . . serving . . . in Perú and the hundreds of relationships and close connections that have grown over all these years. I was also thinking about how much I have been shaped and impacted by our work in Perú.
One of the boys approached me last week while visiting the Casa Girasoles Urubamba with our Community of Excellence research team. He is a 6-year-old boy I have known for a couple of years. He said, “I want to give you something to share how I feel about seeing you.” He then left the room where we were setting up for the meeting. A few minutes later, he reappeared with a bag of dry cereal. He handed me the small package and said – “you mean so much to me that I wanted you to have this.”
Cereal – especially sweetened cereal – is a big deal for the boys at the Casa Girasoles. It is something they get less often. For this little boy, that bag of cereal represented a prized possession. And he gave it to me. I almost started crying. It reminded me that what we do is about receiving just as much as it is about serving. It touched me deep inside in a way only the tenderness and generosity of a child can.
Today is Fiestas Patrias. It is a time to give thanks and remember why Perú means so much to many. For me, it is a time to accept the blessings my connection to the people of Perú gives me daily.
Building Support – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneI have a plastic box of screws, bolts, fasteners, and odds-and-ends I have collected for years. I pull out the box and rummage for a match whenever I have a missing bolt.
I add to the collection whenever I find an aberrant item. It is a collection of treasured finds, incorrect purchases, and failed projects. I love the box. The articles are a reassurance that I have a backup plan. Sometimes I am lucky and find what I need. Other times I merely confirm a suspicion and need to head to the local hardware store.
This past weekend we had our first A Bridge to Change event in Hartford, Connecticut. We sold 63 tickets and had almost 50 attendees. We also raised close to $30,000 to support the Casa Girasoles Program. It was a great success.
In addition to the financial support, the event connected HBI to a whole new group of stakeholders. We built bridges with people who had just learned about our work. We also were blessed to have the support of a large group of ex-pat Peruvians from the area, including the Consular General from the Peruvian Consulate to the United States.
The event was like my box of screws and bolts – it added to our resources and expanded our bridges. This work – transforming the lives of children who have lived through tremendous trauma – takes a team of people. No person has all the knowledge and skills needed to be “everything to everyone,” so we have a group of supporters and stakeholders.
This past weekend we built more support for our movement. Together, we can continue to work toward a world where every child has access to health, hope, home, and purpose.
Living Our Why – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneWhat is our why? I remember discussing Health Bridges’s “why ” and our work with a core group of supporters many years back. We were building on the lessons we gained from the now-famous Simon Sinek TEDx talk of 2014. The “why” we crafted back then has shifted a bit over the years, but the core, the essence of our “why” remains – we exist to champion children and the communities that care for them.
This guiding force leads all our work – from our train-the-trainer program to bring newborn resuscitation skills to all healthcare professionals in Perú to our Comunidad Girasoles work and the goal of ensuring every child has access to health, hope, home, and purpose. Everything we do is about making the world a better place for children. We know our “why.”
However, more than simply knowing why we exist is required. To this end, we have spent many hours structuring our methodology – defining the mechanisms we use to bring the “why” of our vision to reality. We’ve developed our Centers of Excellence work to get our “why” into action. Our efforts focus on developing precise, easily accessible, scalable models that can be adopted and adapted by child-welfare serving organizations to enhance the care they bring to children who have lived through the experience of trauma, neglect, violence, and abandonment.
We have a significant lift before us. While we continue to care for over 50 children in our Comunidad and Casa Girasoles, we are also building models that we hope will be useful in transforming child welfare services everywhere. It’s a lot like building a plane and flying it simultaneously – it all sounds great until the wheels get off the ground. The challenges come from the simple fact that we need financing to feed, clothe, nurture, and prepare all the youth in the Girasoles Program – and we need the money to develop the Center of Excellence models and evaluate their effectiveness and efficacy.
It seems like a lot at times . . . and then I remember our “why.” Then I remind myself why we have dedicated our lives to this work. That is when I settle in and live our “why” daily!
Spring Newsletter
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneHow is it already May?! This year feels like it is flying past at breakneck speed. We did, however, want to give you an update on our work.
We are in full swing with Phase II of the Center of Excellence training and research project with child welfare programs in Perú. In collaboration with our partners – the Peruvian NGO Paths of Hope and Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia, USA), and Universidad Catolica Santa Maria (Arequipa, Perú) – we have expanded our project to include a new pilot testing site for the Center of Excellence curriculum. We are also refining the tools we developed under Phase I of the study in the two Casa Girasoles homes.
What is the Center of Excellence project? Great question. The CoE is a 5-years research and training project to understand better how to train staff and service providers in Perú working with children living outside of parental care. That includes children living in orphanages, state-run homes, foster care, and institutional care settings. Rather than re-developing a training curriculum or re-formulating an evidence-based practice, the CoE seeks to help programs create “cultures of excellence” to support staff and child development and empowerment. The CoE is a model for making lasting connections and awareness – among the providers working in child welfare and the youth receiving services. The data from our Phase I research is under review – but so far shows some powerful connections between provider awareness and mindfulness and the creation of “cultures of excellence. We feel confident the Center of Excellence model will become the standard for supporting child welfare care systems and children living outside of parental care throughout Latin America.
We’re also excited to share the progress made by the Newborn Resuscitation Training Program (NRTP) team in Perú. Under the direction of Dr. Bob Gehringer, HBI Medical Director, the NRTP team is advancing training for healthcare professionals nationwide.Dr. Bob and Dra. Mary Boyer has been working closely with our partners, the Peruvian College of Midwives and the Peruvian College of Nurses, to establish training teams and implement the program. Over the course of 3-weeks, Dr. Bob and Dra. Mary visited 5 cities, 12 organizations, provided the equivalent of 32 workshops for 496 participants including 36 new nurse trainers. They are making tentative plans for returning to conduct trainings for a few days in Cajamarca where the regional College of Midwives wants a training for 10-12 new trainers, one for each provincia. They will also train more nurse trainers in Lima at the College of Nurses, followed by 10-12 days of separate visits to several new regional colleges of nursing programs of the National College of Nursings choosing.
Through their efforts, Peru’s healthcare professionals receive the training they need to provide life-saving care to newborns.We’re proud to support the NRTP and the vital work to improve healthcare outcomes for mothers and infants in Perú. With continued effort and dedication, we’re confident that the program will continue to make a significant impact in the years to come.
Thew new clinic – our Center of Excellence in Community Healthcare – has finally opened in Alto Cayma. Father Alex Busuttil and the Missionary Society of St. Paul have worked tirelessly over the past 18-months to build a state-of-the-art community health center. Check out this video for an update: https://youtu.be/Rh6ysVxOMpk
We resigned our historic Memorandum of Agreement with Catholic University (Universidad Catolica Santa Maria) in Arequipa. Our agreements are a first of there kind, in that the MOA includes collaboration with all faculty at the university and offers a platform for research, cultural and professional exchange, and inter-professional development. We are super proud of of our partnership with UCSM and look forward to doing a lot of really wonderful things together over the coming years.
Our final update is on the boys and staff of the Casa Girasoles homes. The past three years have been rough is a terrible understatement. With COVID and the social and political unrest, Perú has been through a lot. This “double pandemic” impacted the boys and staff of our homes. However, things are finally moving back to normal. Thanks to the generous and ongoing support of BicycleAttorney.com and the team – we have a fleet of new bikes for the boys. They love the freedom and connection of getting out and about on their new bikes. We have some new staff, and they are all integrating wonderfully. Dr. Roberto Tarazona has been promoted to the role of the Director of the Comunidad Girasoles program and is now responsible for helping to ensure all aspects of our work with the boys are at the highest level. The Communidad Girasoles includes the work of our mentorship and youth development program. Under the leadership of Lic. Mg. Billy Greenman from Paths of Hope and Lic. Jocabeth Oscátegui Pérez, HBI, now has a scholarship and technical training program for young men who have aged out of the Casa Girasoles. The program includes helping connect young men with screened and vetted mentors and supporting former Girasoles as they transition to independent living. This is a considerable addition to our work and is already making a difference in the lives of many of the Girasol.
Needless to say, we’ve been busy. Please feel free to send us a message or call – we love hearing from you – the HBI family of supporters. Thank you for all your ongoing dedication to HBI and the people of Perú.
An Update from Perú – Dr. Bob Gehringer
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneIn Cajamarca again, lovely old central city, cathedrals with stone gingerbread facades, robust shoulders of green mountains all around. It’s May 1, International Worker’s Day, a federal holiday in Perú and in much of the world. Dr. Mary Boyer and I are on an extensive training trip to check out the trainers we’ve trained in newborn resuscitation.
Our hotel is on the corner of the Plaza de Armas, the site of the assassination of Atahuallpa, the last Incan king, at the hands of Francisco Pizarro and friends in 1533. After obtaining a huge ransom, the invaders plan was to have Atahuallpa draw and quartered anyway. Body part separation portending bad karma in the afterlife, the “merciful” Spaniards strangled him instead, extremities intact. Francisco never was nominated for the Mister Congeniality award, and he himself was assassinated in Lima eight years later.
After almost 500-years, this morning the Plaza is full of young families chasing toddlers, couples with love puppy eyes snuggling on park benches, and older ladies from the countryside in their skirts and leggings and tall wide-brimmed straw hats, looking vaguely uncomfortable in the city.
After two very busy weeks, first in Lima training 36 neonatal nurse specialists from all over the country to teach the basics of newborn resuscitation and to create local training programs, we traveled to Arequipa to do multiple workshops for a total of 300 participants, mostly final year nursing and midwifery university students. Here in Cajamarca, we’ll have a day with the regional College of Nurses and another with the College of Midwives. We’re then off to Tumbes and Piura.
Stay connected to our on-going efforts to ensure every healthcare provider in Perú is trained in newborn resuscitation and capable of saving a babies life. We are excited to know our efforts are making a difference.
An Update from Perú – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneGreetings from Lima. I arrived to the sticky humid air of early Autumn in the city this morning.
We’ve been getting many requests for updates on the “happenings” in Perú. As such, here is a blog update on the happenings as we see them.
Undoubtedly you have heard the story about the frog in boiling water. The slower the temperature rises, the more the frog has lured into a sense that everything is normal—unfortunately, this false sense of security leads to the frog’s demise.
Perú is in a strange political space. Outside of a couple of focal areas in the country’s southern portion, the protests that paralyzed the country in early 2023 have stopped. The demonstrations that shocked the international community and nearly shut down the country’s economy have quelled. Many Peruvians are just tired of the frustrations of the roadblocks and supply chain disruptions.
What does this mean for the average Peruvian? Well, since there is no such thing as an average Peruvian – it means something different for everyone. However, one thing seems clear – politics, as usual, will reign. The social unrest that led to mass protests with the mandate for early elections and constitutional reform seems to have disappeared. The current administrator of President Dina Boluarte appears to be headed toward a full term – with elections not happening until 2026.
With such a polarizing political system, President Boluarte will likely have little to no beneficial impact over the next three years. The proverbial tea leaf readers of Peruvian politics anticipate little to no action on the part of the current administration; and, unfortunately, this means all of the challenges that impacted the country over the pandemic and the protracted recovery of the economy due to the political and social unrest will weigh heavily on the backs of underserved Peruvians – an estimated 60+% of the population!
This political stasis means the crippling inflation and escalating social disparity seems likely to continue . . . if not escalate. Whatever lens one chooses to look at the situation, one thing is clear: life for the underserved, undereducated, marginalized citizens of Perú – the temperature is rising and getting dangerous. The frog is boiling and does not even know it, or it is fully aware of its fate – but has no other option than to simmer in the boiling waters of its current situation.
Look, I am not implying the people of Perú are pre-destined for continued political and social strife. I certainly hope not. I am, however, saying that the situation – political distrust, social discontent, economic polarization – is becoming normalized . . . and this normalization will not be to the betterment of people living in the experience of economic poverty of social exclusion.
So, what’s next? That is hard to say. Prices for basic foodstuffs and daily staples continue to rise. Wages remain stagnant. The enormous percentage of the Peruvian workforce locked into informal employment is not abating. The water is slowly boiling.
All of this brings me to a solution. Let’s figure out a way to get the frog out of the boiling pot, and if that’s not possible, let’s find a way to turn down the heat. In practical terms, for HBI, this means working to fully prepare the families, youth, and young adults we work with to have the skills they need to navigate the complex world around them. It means continuing in our work to create models that can be used in various contexts to help people gain access to the futures they deserve. And it means continually focusing on the current and pressing, as well as the future and uncertain. For us, it means staying the course.
Finding Serenity – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneI have this picture in my head. It is a high mountain meadow filled with flowers in the early spring. The vision is of a place that instantly brings me a sense of comfort.
As much as my memory can confirm, I visited such a place as a young boy. While on a camping trip with my father, I wandered into this idyllic mountain oasis. It was a true paradise for my soul.
I think about this experience when I feel overwhelmed or uncertain. The memory grounds me. It reminds me that out there is a place of serenity.
There are a lot of uncertainties in the work we do with HBI. There are the uncertain futures of the children we support. The uncertain funds that we need to keep our programs and projects running. The uncertain nature of holding a vision for a place that may or may not ever materialize. Its okay for so much of our work to be uncertain . . . as long as we hold to the certainty that our work is about building toward a place of serenity.
One thing is sure – our work is about holding on to hope. In challenging times, we keep reminding ourselves where we are heading – a world where every child can access a life built on health, hope, home, and purpose.
When things feel a bit overwhelming . . . when the stress of trying to figure out how we will pay for the additional boys that need a safe home and a supportive place to build the lives they deserve . . . I remind myself that waiting to be discovered is a place of serenity – and my work is to help bring that reality to everyone we serve.
Lasting Change – wayne centrone
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Wayne CentroneWhat constitutes change? True lasting change. The kind of change that creates a paradigm shift or social revolution.
It does not seem that lasting change can be made strictly at the level of the physical. Simply changing physical conditions does not confer long-term, sustainable change. Think of the act of digging a hole. With a shovel in hand, you dig. Over the course of an hour, your hole reaches a depth of 0.5 meters. You prepare the margins to prevent cave-in, you pack the dirt inside your cavitation carefully to ensure integrity. Then you walk away. Will your hole be there in 20-years? Chances are the natural conditions of the wind, rain, snow, and time will gradually shift the soil and refill your hole. It will take time but make no bones about it – nature will eventually reclaim what is hers.
This same scenario is true for our efforts at social change. Simply creating a hole through actions alone will not lead to lasting change. No, we need to affect change at the level of our feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. We need to fortify our physical efforts for change with profound reorientations of our affect and emotions. This is a lot harder work than simply digging at the layers of social and cultural strata with the hope that our agitation will lead to constitutional change.
I have been in Amsterdam this week. One of the things that stands out most when I travel is how different cultures act differently. This may sound like a overstatement of the obvious . . . it is. However, identifying the differences, understanding the subtle influences of culture, requires one to look a bit differently – deeper – at life around us. We must change the way we are in the world.
There is a famous bronze statue in the center of Amsterdam near the Central train station. The statue, titled Homeless Jesus, is a striking reminder that to create change – I need to look at the world differently. I need to behave differently. The statue, inconspicuously rendered on a bench in a small park, is often misinterpreted as a person living in the experience of homelessness with a thick brown blanket. The life-like features of the figure trick the viewer into assuming it is a person. This is powerful. I sat affixed on the statue for several minutes. I watched as people walked past without even glancing. Every so often a person would stop, realize the figure they assumed was a man sleeping off a drunken binge, and stare in puzzlement. I did not see anyone approach the plaque on the wall, read the inscription, and delve further into the figure. Instead, once they recognized the bronze art, the giggled and walked off.
So much of the complex challenge we are facing in this world is melded into our every day lives. We walk past the suffering, the sick, the homeless – not because we don’t care, but because we don’t truly see what is begging for our attention. We can change this. We can. But it starts with changing ourselves. We need to grant our heart and mind permission to stop and see things differently. We need to dig deeper with our shovels of curiosity and inquiry and seek to understand the why behind the world all around us. It is when we move past the perception of what we see, to the reality of why we see – that true change is possible.