TMI Peru volunteers
This page provides prospective
volunteers information about opportunities in the Andes Program
of TMI. If you are interested
in a volunteer’s job at The Mountain Institute- Peru, please
read on carefully.
Why do we want volunteers?
The volunteers initiative of The Mountain Institute
aims to create opportunities for meaning contributions from people
who often write to us asking for ways to contribute to our work
in the Huascarán Biosphere Reserve. National as well as
international volunteers are welcomed. We have developed a mechanism
that enable the volunteers to assist, exchange or develop work
initiatives in the several projects TMI executes in the Biosphere
Reserve, a beautiful mountain region characterize by rural poverty,
yet a wealth of social and cultural inheritance. |
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 The
Volunteer’s program
has a full-time coordinator who is in charge of organizing the activities
of the volunteers,
with the aim that they
contribute in effective ways to the goals and objectives of TMI’s
field projects. Besides, it is the coordinator who assists the volunteers
with anything they need during their stay in the area. He is also
the one who will arrange the volunteers’ transportation from Lima
airport to Huaraz and other logistical needs.
Sharing an experience…
First of all, TMI expects each one of its staff including the volunteers,
to be able to work with a degree of independence and showing initiative.
Nevertheless, you can always count on the necessary assistance of the Volunteers
Coordinator.
 TMI works with the local population who live around
the borders of Huascarán
National Park. The work with the “campesinos” is very interesting,
but not easy. Therefore, we accept a small number of volunteers with
good command of spoken Spanish in order to adapt to the socio-cultural
challenges
of rural Peru and with enough previous experience to establish good
relationships with our local partners.
TMI’s office is situated in the city of Huaraz, the capital
of the province of Ancash. It’s a big city with approximately
80 thousand inhabitants, and is situated at an altitude of 3.100 meters.
From the city, you can see the Cordillera Blanca mountain range, with
the highest mountain of Peru, the Huascarán (6.768 m.), which
continuously dominates the view.
 Close to the city we find the “comunidades campesinas”,
local villages, where the people still live their traditional lives:
men busy
to the fields to do their agricultural work or to towns in the region
for work in the city; women dressed in colorful dresses with their
babies on
their backs, walk their sheep, pigs and cows to the mountain pastures,
over unpaved roads. . Beyond this beautiful surface are the dreams and
the challenges that these Andean men and women have to better their
lives and to which TMI aspires to contribute. We work with communities
in nature
conservation projects that fit the livelihood needs and priorities of
those communities we partner with. With their lands, their forests
and their
animals. We just hope that to all of our future volunteers, we can transmit
this love for the mountains, its people and its environment. For a detailed
description of our past projects and those under development see the
Andes Program Home Page
TMI Peru is a staff group of 10 people. We have a capacity
to receive 2 volunteers simultaneously and receive a total of about
6 to 8 volunteers
per year. Volunteers often come for no less than 2 months and typically
stay for 3 to 6 months. More detailed information in Spanish is available
by writing to Volunteers Coordinator tmiperu@mountain.org.
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