Yantalo Peru Foundation Launches Fundraising Ventures in Norfolk

By Emily Roberts

The Yantalo Peru Foundation held a dinner at Imperio Inca restaurant in Ghent as its first fundraiser to benefit the Peruvian village of Yantalo.

Approximately 20 people attended the June 8 event, said Sarina Hrubesch, the Foundation's director of development.

Hrubesch acknowledged the small turnout, but said the event was really a test run for the Foundation's future fundraising efforts.

"We were just getting a little, tiny toe wet, not even a foot," Hrubesch said, with a laugh.

She added that the event was planned on short notice, but reported positive feedback from the attendants.

"They really got into the spirit of things," she said.

The Yantalo Peru Foundation, founded in 2005, aims to improve health and education in Yantalo, a small village in the Amazon jungle.

Currently, the main goal, and the one the dinner will support, is to build a medical center in the village. Hrubesch emphasized that the planned clinic will be green.

"It's a great solution for the area," she said.

Hrubesch said that just because Yantalo is less developed than other areas, its inhabitants should not be denied resources.

The idea to make the clinic environmentally conscious came about not only because it will be more sustainable, but also because the Foundation wants to build a place where the occupants can feel at home.

Also, making the clinic environmentally sustainable will establish, "a further reaching role than for the needs of right now," Hrubesch said. "It's supposed to lead the people to helping themselves."

From a business perspective, the Foundation hopes that the clinic will attract people from other areas of Peru who will be able to pay for their medical care, so that those funds will provide care for residents with more limited financial means.

There will be a rotating schedule of specialists who will travel to the medical center. Hrubesch said the Foundation averages four trips to Yantalo per year. The groundbreaking ceremony for the medical center took place during the most recent visit, in April. The April trip was also the first trip a dentist visited the village. As the projects expand in Yantalo, the number of specialists will increase also, Hrubesch said.

Graduate Students and faculty at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design developed the plans for the medical center. The Foundation needs to raise $600,000 through fundraising, according to Hrubesch.

"The people are really enabled, they just don't have the materials," she said.

Once completed, the medical center will be available to the 2,000 residents of Yantalo as well as others in surrounding areas.

The village of Yantalo is of personal interest to the organization's president and founder, Luis Vasquez. His mother grew up in Yantalo, and as a child, Vasquez heard stories about the village.

Hrubesch said Vasquez has a special place for Yantalo in his heart.

"The passion is definitely there," she said.

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