Reporting From: Peru
In Reporting From, we bring you insights from USAID disaster experts who tell us what they see and hear while on the ground in disaster-affected areas across the world. For this installment, we heard from team members returning from Peru – a site of refuge for many people who have fled turmoil in neighboring Venezuela in recent years.
Hunger has followed many Venezuelans fleeing intense political and economic crises across international borders and into their new homes. Over the past decade, millions of people who have seen their ability to put food on the table stripped away by soaring inflation, high unemployment, and societal turmoil have left their communities in desperate attempts to meet their basic needs abroad.
A staggering number of Venezuelans have made the more than 1,000 mile journey to Peru to provide for their families. Hardship, however, rarely ends once they reach nearby countries in the region. Small children frequently turn up at the border malnourished and many families are in dire need of food. Following their arrival, many find employment hard to come by.
USAID teams were just on the ground in Peru, which currently hosts more than 1.5 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants. Conversations with those who have left home and the relief organizations working to help them provide a fresh look at efforts to contain hunger in the country.
Lara’s Journey
On the southern outskirts of Peru’s capital city Lima, our team met a young mother named Lara at a food distribution site run by our partner World Vision. The numerous hardships she faced mirrored those of many Venezuelans who have left home in recent years.
Lara has two young children, and Peru was her third attempt at starting a new life. She had previously made long and dangerous journeys to reach Ecuador and Chile but had not been able to earn a living and feed her kids. This forced her to hit the road once again and navigate informal pathways to Peru.
Just a few months into life in Lima, things were already looking up. Cash provided by a World Vision program, supported by USAID, was helping families in her area purchase staples at the grocery store. This had the added benefit of freeing up her extremely limited income to cover rent and other household needs. Cooking demonstrations running when our team arrived at the site were also helping her learn new ways to make nutritious meals for her kids with inexpensive ingredients.
“I learned that I can prepare affordable meals, like blood sausage and liver, which are very good to keep my kids’ hemoglobin levels [up]. A nutritionist also weighed and measured my kids and gave me an illustrated recipe book, recommending nutritious foods and portion sizes,” she noted.
Participants like Lara are resourceful and can maximize the benefit of even just a small amount of assistance. “She is a strong and empowered woman,” USAID’s Mike Heller noted of his interaction with her. “I was very impressed by her resilience.”
Feeding Weary Migrants in the South
Peru’s southern city of Tacna is just about as far as you can get from Venezuela in the country. It’s a full 3,000 miles from Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas and is just a few minutes from the Chilean border. Despite this, a large number of Venezuelan migrants are moving through this harsh desert landscape under precarious circumstances and need access to food.
When our staff arrived in the city, teams from our partners the UN World Food Program (WFP) and ADRA were busy visiting bus stations, parks, and other areas migrants frequent in Tacna to spread news about available food aid. Back at a local support center that serves about 100 Venezuelan migrants a day, specially trained personnel were screening young children for malnutrition and providing vouchers people can use to buy food at local stores.
The variety of foods available at these shops put those who receive assistance in charge of determining which items make most sense for their families given their needs.
The programs our teams visited during their recent trip to Peru represent just a small slice of USAID’s ongoing assistance. Still, we are proud that it represents a much larger commitment to stand by those who are working to ward off hunger and secure a better future for their families and communities.
