Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “Many little people, in small places, doing little things, can change the world.” A few days ago, I called my friend and retired teacher Elena Sánchez Cueva, who explained to me that now with the help that she receives from additional volunteers at the school she runs, she has some time to take care of the flowers in her garden. “I want them to look pretty to cheer up those who visit us.” She then happily told me that she was excited that every day more students arrive with their mothers. Likewise, more young volunteers come from the city of Cajamarca to support her, not only to teach classes and workshops, but also to clean the house, and to sing and dance to the sound of the songs of the Cajamarca carnivals.

Elena, 61, is a retired teacher and psychologist who has decided to donate her time and build a schoolhouse called “Caminos del Corazón” or “Paths of the Heart” on her land on the outskirts of the city of Cajamarca, Peru. The schoolhouse sits in the smaller town of Shaullo Chico in the district of Baños del Inca in Cajamarca. I met Elena this year while doing archaeological work in Cajamarca, at the emblematic site Colina de Santa Apolonia located in the heart of the city. She enrolled as a student at the San Antonio de Cajamarca Technical School that trains local youth in heritage and archaeological issues associated with their regional history. In one of the classes I met Elena who wanted to learn more about archaeological work because her school was next to a pre-Hispanic site. She also wanted to incorporate that ancestral history into her classes and strengthen the local identity of her students.

“This little house is built on a heart. On the first of August, the day of Mamapacha (Mother Nature or Pachamama), we made a very beautiful little paguito (offering to the earth), a heart of flowers, and I feel that that heart that cements this house today flourishes because it fulfills its objective: the long path toward community education in this region,” says Elena, smiling.

In this free school, Elena educates and shelters girls and boys together with their mothers, to whom she also offers psychological workshops and work alternatives to empower them. Currently the school serves an average of 25 boys and girls in different grades. They participate in different workshops: music, gardening, theater, monotype printmaking, repaying the land, and painting, among other things. She also works with a similar number of mothers in the community with the training program “Digital Literacy” that seeks to contribute to improving the learning conditions of their children and to empowering their autonomy through different work skills and opportunities. Mothers are offered baking, textile, and self-esteem and leadership workshops. Because most of them depend on their husbands, they hold  jobs that allow them to generate their own resources.

Elena has been gradually building this space from where she accompanies the mothers and women in the area, not only training them with workshops, but also providing them with a space of well-being and safety. Listening to the women validates their voices, specifically in a country with a high rate of femicides, gender violence and adolescent pregnancies like Peru. Cajamarca is the sixth region in pregnancies of children under 14 years of age, where to date 86% of complaints of physical, psychological or sexual abuse are made by women, according to the Regional Report on Citizen Security, based on data from the Cajamarca Police Front.  Women also have the highest level of informal employment in this region.

Elena is a spiritual guide who connects Western psychology with the ancestral knowledge of the Apus giving them—giving us—peace and purpose. That long=awaited peace after the pandemic, the stress and the losses suffered. She teaches us that we all have a task and that no act is too simple or too small because everything adds up; it is transformed for the better. That is why it is not surprising that every day she receives more volunteers inspired by her work, with almost 28 institutions and people who teach a variety of subjects from paper craft workshops to talks against domestic violence. Elena shows that the more she gives someone, the more she receives in circular learning. Elena inspires. A few days ago, the school was flooded by mud and debris from a landslide caused by heavy rains. The parents of the students, volunteers, archaeologists, her colleagues and neighbors went to help her by making an ayni, a Quechua word for voluntary work of reciprocity and solidarity within the community. Precisely, being part of a community, of a family, is what the schoolhouse and its members make you feel.

Wasisitu Shunqupa Ñanninkuna, the “Caminos del Corazón” schoolhouse, is a cultural and community education space that promotes diverse learning for girls, boys and teens of Shaullo Chico and reassesses the community’s knowledge to strengthen their identity from a perspective of integral ecology and popular education. However, Elena still lacks resources to finish school and to have materials to be able to teach her workshops for free. Together with a group of diverse volunteers from Cajamarca, a group of people, including myself, have wanted to help her make this dream come true, and we hope that you will be part of this.

A gofundme.com has been created, which you can access at the following link: https://gofund.me/18c17a84

The pandemic has affected all of us, but even more those who were already vulnerable such as children and women from rural areas, in this case in the heart of the Andes in northern Peru. We, those of us who enjoy a certain securities such as a housing, food, and, above all, freedom and love, have the opportunity to give back and help create spaces for learning, tolerance and respect such as the little schoolhouse.

Elena’s dream is to create more of these schoolhouses. Elena is a heroine who has always fought against a system that was not created for women. She shows that a woman can change the world by educating and also planting flowers with a wide and transparent smile like her heart.

You can follow Elena’s work on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Wasisitu-Shunqupa-%C3%91anninkuna-104444965300497