“It has been an impressive month in which we have experienced many events and donations. We have worked in very poor areas of Peru, visited centres for minors, made free medical centres for attention with the doctors, we have been in schools and worked with many families, and the coexistence among us has been very enriching. At least once in a lifetime it is necessary to get to know that other world, that other reality”. With these words Antonio Alcaraz, director of the John Paul II International Institute of Charity and Volunteering, summarises the experience of the UCAM-Peru 2019 Summer Campus in which students and workers of the Catholic University have participated during the last weeks.

The expedition was also joined this year by the International Chair of Corporate Social Responsibility of the UCAM, whose director, Víctor Meseguer, highlighted the conferences and courses at the University of Lima, centres for minors and the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights on social intervention with young people, corruption and conflict of interest, responsibility for gender, etc.

The UCAM volunteers have carried out an intense work, with the different initiatives and development cooperation projects, in the most disadvantaged areas of the Andean country, from which they have returned very impressed with everything they have seen and lived, but with the strong intention of repeating the experience. This is what Paloma Rodríguez, student of the Bachelor’s Degree in Medicine, tells us just after arriving in Murcia: “I come back very happy, it has been an incredible experience. We were all united for the common good of helping and doing our bit. The contrast of culture, of another way of life and of seeing that they have hardly anything at home, is just incredible. I will repeat the experience, if not in Peru, somewhere in Africa, but I will volunteer because it is really fulfilling for me as a person”.

Among the tasks carried out by the expedition, the stays in Pachacutec and Iquitos stand out. Isabel Martínez, student of the Bachelor’s Degree in Law, highlights that “we have been in touch with many people who have a terrible situation, with dysfunctional families that do not see the light at the end of the tunnel. We wanted to tell them that there is a different road and there is a way out of everything that happens to them. When you go outside you realise the poverty in the world and that we have to be much more thankful for everything we have”.

Students also had the opportunity to carry out extracurricular practices in different companies, adapted to their fields of study, implementing the knowledge acquired. The most noteworthy are those carried out in the field of health, in two hospitals in the area. Also in the legal field, and thanks to the agreements entered into with the Peruvian Judicial Branch, the UCAM has trained judges and prosecutors from the South American country in the field of professional ethics.

Binational Meeting of Volunteers

Also noteworthy is the celebration of the Binational Meeting of Volunteers, in which the Peruvian Minister for Justice and Human Rights, Vicente Zeballos, welcomed the UCAM expedition, which had the opportunity to share viewpoints on the performance of this kind of work with Peruvian volunteers.

Argentina, Colombia and Kenya, other points of cooperation

This summer, other international volunteering and cooperating activities have also been carried out with the participation of the UCAM in Argentina, Colombia and Kenya. In the African country, the Catholic University of Murcia has collaborated with the initiative of the NGO called Cirugía Solidaria, which has fulfilled its task of carrying out field operations that would be impossible to carry out otherwise by saving lives and improving the living conditions of many. Furthermore, they bring medical equipment and they help train doctors and nurses in the areas in which they work.

In Argentina and Colombia, under the name 'Sonrisas por la paz’ (Smiles for peace), the Fundación de Jesús Foundation, with the collaboration of teachers and students of Dentistry of the UCAM, has given humanitarian assistance to children in social canteens by facilitating their education and dental care through implants and surgery. Specifically, in Colombia, they have helped the persons who have survived the FARC war and have no teeth nor dental prostheses, and therefore have no quality of life. José Luis Calvo, teacher and researcher of the UCAM, has directed the participation of the university in this project.