Dr. Ann Kendall and a first group of Trustees headed by Peter Brooke MP, now Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, founded the Cusichaca Trust (CT) in 1977. Since then each new phase of the Trust's work has lasted roughly a decade.
We have worked at Cusichaca and along the Patacancha river above Ollantaytambo in the Urubamba valley. More recently, with an administrative base at Pampachiri, we have undertaken projects within 10 local Districts in the Departments of Apurimac and Ayacucho (see map).
Economic regeneration, collaborating with local farmers to rehabilitate the agricultural infrastructure of the past, has been the principal focus of our work. But in each specific project area we have devised an integrated approach to tackle expressed need, involving a balance of targeted activities in, for example, health and nutrition, conservation of the environment, the empowerment and support of women and a broad accent on local capacity-building and institutional reinforcement.
Our projects are based on extensive prior research and rooted in full community participation, with local people directly involved in the design of development strategies to tackle the problems they face. CT's Peruvian staff work closely with individual families, with teachers, community representatives and through the whole range of local institutions, from village level to that of local government.