Placentia native volunteers in Peru

The landscape is beautiful. An ancient Inca city built around mountains and hills so high, tourists from all over the world flock to Machu Picchu, Peru for its scenery and Incan history.

"You can look at pictures until you have the entire site memorized but once you get there it will still knock the wind out of you, its amazing," said Placentia native Sarah Murphy.

Murphy realized that there was much more than scenery that attracted her to Peru. She traveled to Peru in May with a volunteer organization called International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ).

"I worked with children in a kindergarten, a very underdeveloped kindergarten."

IVHQ sends volunteers internationality to help teach children English, help with childcare, medical placements and jungle conservation. From May 11 to June 9, Murphy helped in a three-room kindergarten.

"It was a kindergarten for kids in between ages three to five. There were three teachers and myself and the other volunteers would basically go back and forth between the classrooms, help the teachers, distribute materials and help copy materials," she said.

"There was one little girl who was cross-eyed and couldn't see the board. There were so many students in that class and not enough teachers that they couldn't really help her. So I sat down with her every now and then and I would write down on a separate piece of paper what was on the board and then help her write it on her own paper so she could pass it in and go out and play," said the Placentia native.

Murphy's volunteer program was for approximately 15 - 20 hours a week. In her spare time she explored the areas.

"I was based in Cuzco which is about 500,000 people with surrounding areas. I also spent some time in Lima and Bolivia.

"The thing is about South America that I thought was amazing was the poverty. I obviously anticipated (that) going down there, but it's nothing compared to what I experienced. Cuzco wasn't so bad and neither was La Paz or Bolivia. In Lima you'd have people begging on the streets and you had little kids by themselves trying to sell things to you because they absolutely have nothing else."

Murphy wanted to volunteer with an organization like this one for quite some time.

"I've heard about people going and volunteering internationally at the time. I looked up different programs online and IVHQ was really affordable for students. I really want to get into human rights as a career. I want to do my masters degree at Kingston University in London, England next year in human rights and hopefully get into doing this for a living."

Murphy is entering in her final year of studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

editor@thecharter.ca