Asociacion SOLAC

Asociación SOLAC, a Peruvian non-profit organization, was founded (under this name) in 2003 by students of the Universidad Catolica de Lima and has grown to include a cooperative membership of scholars and students from the United States and Peru. The organization regularly carries on projects in the vicinity of Lima, oriented towards social and economic development.

SOLAC was founded in 2001 under the pseudonym of "La Causa." Since that point it has been guided by a group of young people, of varying disciplines, from the Facultad de Estudios Generales Letras of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.

The first projects undertaken were short term, projects in which various kinds of aid resources were delivered to needy communities (in the vicinity of Lima). By means of small fund-raising activities, the organization gathered clothing, books, and other items of basic necessity to be donated. Simultaneously, small workshops and recreational activities were being carried out in those areas.

Little by little the idea of SOLAC was maturing and becoming institutionalized. Work was continued in 2004-2005 when SOLAC staged a photo exhibition entitled "Yuyanapaq" at the University of Virginia, detailing the twenty years of political violence in Peru. This exposé was accompanied by talks and films linked to the theme of human rights in general. The event was repeated the following year, also yielding promising results.

The following year, a diagnostic survey was undertaken in the east of Lima, with the intent of identifying populations whose basic needs were not being met, and who were living in states of extreme poverty. In this way, an exhaustive diagnostic was completed in a brick-producing area, in the district of Chosica Lurigancho, situated in the east cone of Lima. The duration of the study was six to eight months, in which surveys and interviews were carried out, focus groups were implemented, as well as other techniques aimed at collecting statistics.

The results and statistics yielded by their diagnostic served as a platform for the design and subsequent execution of the project, Biblioteca Comunitaria Alto Peru, which is being carried at the present time.

Lima has long been accustomed to migrations from the Andean anterior. In its most recent form, however, migration and the inexorable demands of industry on Lima's peripheries have resulted in a situation whereby child labour is ubiquitous, standards of living and sanitation are abysmal, and the average family is forced to adopt a life suited to refugees. The site of our most recent project, Alto Perú (not to be confused with Upper Peru), is one of the poorest districts of the shanty town conglomerates collectively known as "Los Conos" or "Pueblos jóvenes", the cone-shaped barrios that delimit Lima's northern, southern, and eastern borders. Although extreme poverty is a problem in most cono neighbourhoods, Alto Perú, which additionally suffers the direct burdens of industrial contamination, is by many estimates the gravest case.

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