EMpower Board Director Jeremy Llewelyn visits grantee partners in Peru!

Posted 10 January 2017 in EMpower News   |   Share

Last summer Jeremy Llewelyn, Co-Chair of EMpower’s UK Board of Directors and Chair of the Global Joint Executive Committee, and his family had the opportunity to visit four EMpower grantee partners in Peru!

EMpower currently has eight grantee partners in Peru and issues affecting youth include high rates of school drop-out, high youth unemployment and low job preparedness, as well as human trafficking.

During his trip, Jeremy met with Eliana Elias, co-founder of longstanding grantee partner Minga Peru, which EMpower has funded since 2003 and most recently supported a capacity building program for other Peruvian grantee partners which has shown excellent results.

Jeremy and his family then visited partners Kallpa, Yana and Kusi Kawsay in Cuzco and surrounding areas. At Kallpa they met young women the same age as Jeremy’s daughters, who were being trained as peer youth promoters to support other at-risk young women. Jeremy told us Kallpa was “a wonderful example of creating grass roots women leaders to maximize and replicate impact in their communities as broadly and efficiently as possible and thereby extend EMpower’s reach as far as possible.”

They met with the committed staff at grantee Yana, which now operates both in Cuzco and the city of Puno and works with girl domestic workers, ensuring their attendance at school and supporting them to find work with adequate pay and rights. A mutual love for boy bands such as One Direction was discovered when Jeremy’s family talked to the girl participants!

Lastly, they visited Kusi Kawsay which provides education to indigenous communities and sustainable entrepreneurship training to youth. Jeremy highlighted the passion and commitment of the teachers and the dignity that they are bringing to youth in this community.

After an eye-opening trip, Jeremy said “We leave Peru with many wonderful memories of our time there and the knowledge that the EMpower grantee partners we visited are working each and every day to offer choice and opportunity to at risk youth to enable them to achieve their full potential.”

See more photos of the trip on our Facebook page!