My name is Geoff and last Christmas I took part in ProWorlds Winter Break Project. There were four of us in my group, in Urubamba, an hour drive from Cusco, the ancient capital of Peru.

Over the first half of our stay we were involved in the local development project and made daily trips to the nearby village of Chicerec to install new stoves with chimneys into local homes to reduce the amount of smoke being emitted into the home. We did this by demolishing old fire places and building new ones from mud bricks and steel.

The most effective aspect of this was that we were building alongside local villagers so that after we left development could still be sustained. Everyday proved interesting and rewarding.

I’d usually get up to the sound of pan drums in the street and have a coffee and yoghurt breakfast. Then we would usually head up out of Urubamba up to the smaller villages in a tiny car packed full of equipment to begin construction.

Often, our group leader, Javier, would stop us in our tracks to tell us about a certain rare Peruvian flower we came across or the history of the village we were in, adding to the level to our sense of total immersion. If we were lucky we would be given lunch by a local family and then head back to Casa Pro Peru to work on smaller projects, prepare supplies or just lie in the hammock in our garden.

We would head to dinner in the evenings at local restaurants and get a full three course meal for little more than 5 nuevo sols. The great thing about our Group Programme was that on weekends we got to see the most of the Peruvian landmarks. These included a visit to the bustling streets of Cusco with an overnight stay in a luxury hotel and, of course a hike to the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu.

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