reading test 1 AVNC4

Minga Peru, a non-governmental organization (NGO), aims to promote social justice and human dignity in rural areas of Latin America. Since it began work in 1998, it has run many and varied projects. One of its main projects is to serve people in remote communities in the Loreto region of Peru’s Amazon River basin. Often living in poverty, these small, isolated populations have limited access to electricity, drinking water and education. By supporting local women and helping solve cultural differences in understanding and language barriers, Minga Peru tries to improve the lives of the people in the region.

One programme created and produced by Minga Peru is Bienvenida Salud, a radio programme broadcast three days a week. It encourages listeners throughout Loreto to openly discuss topics such as health, gender equality and human rights. In such a large geographic area of thick forest and few roads, broadcasts such as this one are the only reliable way of reaching an audience. Since women in these areas often can’t read and rarely have mobile phones, it is the only really effective method of providing information about these important subjects. The radio programmes are available through personal, battery-powered radios, over community loudspeakers or in classrooms via cassette tapes, and Bienvenida Salud reaches 120,000 people daily.

In addition to the radio programme broadcast, Minga Peru trains women to be ‘promotoras’. This word describes a community member who receives specialized training to provide basic health education in the community without being a professional health care worker. These women are role models and decision-makers who teach other women what they have learned. They also lead environmentally sustainable projects which raise money for their own families and communities, such as fish farms, forestry programmes and sewing cooperatives. In rural villages, women often lead traditional lives, with few rights and no access to education. So Minga Peru’s specialized training programmes change the status of women and attitudes to women.

Emira Montes Zuta is a great example of how Minga Peru’s work can change lives. Zuta started listening to Bienvenida Salud when she was a teenager. Encouraged by the programme’s message, a family member sent a letter to the organization, and Minga Peru visited their community. Zuta received leadership training and became one of Loreto’s first ‘promotoras’, as well as one of the first women to speak in her village’s meeting.

Today, Zuta is one of the most recognized voices in the Amazon, working as both a senior trainer and the Loreto Region Program Manager for Minga Peru. She also helps develop programmes that present a local perspective on the rainforest to tourists who visit the region. “Minga Peru has been my main ‘university’ where I have been trained and supported as a person and a professional,” says Zuta. “I feel like I have developed important skills and habits to be a strong agent of social change. I still feel very connected to my values, my culture, my traditions and my beliefs, and I am able to speak as I am.”