Sad news – Project Alejandra

Sad news from the Sonrisasenperu family. We have been supporting the wonderful but very poor family of Alejandra over the last couple of years. It started with a food donation at Christmas time and some gifts for a poor child but turned into regular help with food and also tuition for Alejandra in an attempt to improve her grades up to the level of other students. Her mother, Aunty and grandmother were illiterate and could not help her with any kind of homework. You can see their story here. As you can see by the photos the family are extremely poor and really struggle. They live on a concrete floor and their “windows” don’t have glass. They don’t even have a bathroom/toilet but need to share a communal bathroom with 3 other families at the back of the housing complex.

I just discovered an hour ago that the Aunty, Maria, had passed away. Maria had kidney renal failure, and needed dialysis three times a week to drain the body of fluids, toxins, and balance electrolytes, which functioning kidneys would normally do. She had had this condition for over 20 years and needed a kidney transplant. Sadly, her fight ended today. This is Maria in the photo above in yellow. You can see the condition of her right arm from the many years of dialysis to remove her body’s fluids since her kidneys didn’t work.

We would like to help the family with their funeral arrangements and are seeking some help to make this possible. Maria will be buried 4 hours outside of Lima in her home town. If you can help out please send us a donation. It will be much appreciated.

I just got back from visiting the family and the total cost is US$1250 or S/3500 local currency.