Exposing Reality to Students via Travel and not TV

Most travelers bring home a trinket, souvenir, or knickknack from a trip.

Students from the New School of Northern Virginia returned home with a purpose.

It was to improve lives of some Peruvians they met on their trip in 2011.

Andean Discovery designed their itinerary to correlate with their ancient civilizations studies. The group’s hiking boots trekked the same steps as their subjects did hundreds of years ago along the famed Inca Trail. Seeing Machu Picchu up-close and personal, according to teacher/trip-leader Pete Kornmeier, amazed everyone, regardless of how much prior Pre-Columbian research had been done.

When led into villages where descendants of the Tawantinsuyu now live, the vast economic differences between the students and their Peruvian hosts became quite evident.

Outside of Cusco, children walked over an hour to Willa Willa where they accepted school supplies from the New School representatives. For kids used to the ease of mass transit or private cars, a definite impact was made.

They also observed the age-old practice of cooking indoors with only a small roof opening to provide ventilation. Respiratory problems, lung and heart disease, and devastating burns affected young and old. In addition, gathering firewood meant the rapid depletion of native trees.

The transforming observations made by the high school students manifested themselves into the establishment of a Peru Club at their school.

Driven by their own determination, fundraisers range from bake sales to rock wall climbing challenges to hotly contested students-versus-faculty volleyball games. Considering the entire student body is less than 200, their success at gathering money is phenomenal.

Returning to the Sacred Valley’s Huayacocha Community in 2012, the goal was to build and supply residents with a safer mode of cooking through Andean Discovery’s Clean Stove Project.

Although some gently bemoaned the lack of a hot shower and little electricity, all the students enthusiastically cut metal for support rods, carried bricks, and scrambled up rooftops to secure new chimneys with fresh mud.

Smiles of gratefulness and pride filled in where rudimentary Spanish and English could not.

Travel is often described as a broadening experience. To the students and teachers of the New School of Northern Virginia, their expansion continues to better the lives of people in both hemispheres.

If you care to donate to the school’s Peru Club, we’d be happy to put you in touch, give us a call.