Dear friends,

The year 2007 provided great joy to those who work with our children and now their mothers, it saw the implementation of an important project we have been preparing for several years, challenges in the realm of volunteer recruitment, adjustments to how we get street children educated more efficiently, three pilot projects which did not live up to our expectations, and ever more positive recognition of our work by Governments in the cities, states, provinces and countries where we conduct our projects.

In 2006 we were forced to confront the Government of Peru when everyone in a position to know simply refused to admit that 26% of Peru´s children are not getting educated - we got the press involved, even marched in front of the houses of Parliament [www.permitannosestudiar.org]. By the time we had won our point we had spent the good will built up during our early years in Peru. It did not therefore seem a propitious time to pose our burning question: "Will the Ministry of Education now take on board our proven method of recruiting and getting the poorest children into education as part of the Governments´ constitutional obligation to provide education to all the nations children?" Instead we waited throughout 2007, continuing to demonstrate the worth of our system by maintaining our shanty schools and opening new ones. We also quietly went about seeking relationships with unbenighted functionaries in the Ministries of Education and Women who are genuinely dedicated to getting all the nation´s children educated. In 2008 or 09 we hope to be in a position to approach the Government again, by then on a nicely nicely basis.
In 2007 we faced a strong challenge from companies in the growing Volunteer-Tourism sector, who often pose as charities and with advertising budgets and their ever growing numbers: draw away most of people who we used to receive as volunteers. In 2007 our founder and sister NGO, Agenda SOS International, invested $175 to get each volunteer we recruited, and still we only managed to recruit the same number of international volunteers we had in 2005. We are in no doubt about the rich contribution international volunteers make to our work and projects, but the reality of not having enough to supply all our projects forced us in 2007 to operate our schools in Chiclayo, Chimbote, and Panama mostly with paid national professionals, and only the occasional visit from Trujillo based volunteers, and only five volunteers in Panama all year. This adjustment only slightly affected the children involved, but was not up to the standard of our volunteer serviced centres. In future we will probably have to abandon direct recruitment of international volunteers and contract an agency to do this for us.

In 2008 we intend to open our educational project in at least two more Peruvian cities, continue to grow our project to help the mothers of our children to become financially independent, to use the goodwill built up by a series of strong volunteer directors in Quito to petition the Government of Ecuador to assimilate our system into the education system; and we plan to provide our street kids education programme to poor children in Bolivia.

Ana Teresa Rosell Grijalba,
President, Bruce Organisation ong (ngo)