Samusocial Peru was created in Peru as an NGO in 2004 and started its operations in 2005 in Huaycan, outside of Lima. It is affiliated with Samusocial International and Samusocial de Paris. The Samusocial de Paris was created in 1993 by Dr Xavier Emmanuelli (Co-founder, Medecins sans Frontieres) to meet the medical, psychological and social needs of those excluded from society.
Its specificity resides in its mobile structures (roving teams) and in the fact that it operates day and night and goes into all areas. In 1998, the Samusocial International was created as an extension of the original structure. All the large cities of the world generate social dislocation, loss of sense and finally, exclusion: many people in great distress try to survive the streets.
Samusocial International reaches out towards these people in order to provide them with emergency aid and to seek out, with its partners, sustainable solutions for the longer term. Samusocial International is present in countries like Algeria, Belgium, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, French Guyana, Mali, Morocco, Romania, Russia, Senegal and since ’05, Peru.
Samusocial Peru is concentrating its efforts in Santa Rosa and Huaycan, two Pueblos Jovenes (poor neighborhoods) that surround the capital, Lima. It operates several mobile units (ambulances) that goes out daily in search of people, mainly children, in need of immediate medical assistance. The children of Santa Rosa and Huaycan and their families face many medical and psychological problems such as family violence, sexual abuse, alcoholism, depression, and respiratory and intestinal diseases. Malnutrition is an issue for many children. The mobile unit is composed of a social worker, a nurse and a driver. They cruise the neighborhood in order to care for and listen to people in social and medical emergency situations. They organize their actions around three main missions: medical assistance, psychological support and preventive education.
Samusocial Peru was our first beneficiary as our first fundraising campaign was dedicated to their activity: we bought their second ambulance in 2006.
Then over the years we had many projects with Samusocial Peru: In 2007 we started a program to help fight against Tuberculosis in Huaycan. In August of that year, when an earthquake hit Peru, we immediately raised USD 10,000 and we used them to help Samusocial Peru to organize immediate relief with Pompiers Sans Frontieres. Then, in the following years we continued to finance the operating costs of the ambulance, we bought more vehicules, we also financed the construction of two new building for the Huaycan High school, “Colegio Gustavo Mohme” with a total of six brand new classrooms. In 2013, Samusocial was invited to replicate their Huaycan model into Santa Rosa, a Pueblo Joven north of Lima. Our grant made this possible. In the following years our support to this new operation continued through grants taking care of the ambulances (second one purchased recently) and other projects.