Commitment to Communities

Wayki Trek makes it a priority to serve a variety of local Andean communities. After doing a conscious study of Andean communities, Wayki found serious problems such as loss of identity, lack of basic services such as healthcare, low education levels, low prices of agricultural products and migration to the city because of extreme poverty. We decided to take action to improve the lives of people in the countryside through tourism. We started three projects:

CONSTRUCTION OF THE MEDICAL CLINIC

It began in 2009 with the idea to construct a health clinic in the community of Chillipahua-Huarocondo with more than 190 families. The community is isolated and faraway from the populated center and do not have basic services.  Statistically, the undernourishment and infantile mortality is very high there. Therefore, we began to speak with the inhabitants of the community to collaborate in the improvement of health. The Company, WAYKI TREK, began to look for other allies to help in the construction of the Medical Clinic. We found the WORLD CHALLENGE Travel Agency of Briton, who accepted the challenge with pleasure. Thus, we began construction between the two companies with the support of groups of students of different schools and universities from the UK.  It’s been more than a year of work under construction. Fortunately, this project is already concluded. However, the second phase requires plastering of all the premises, with which we must culminate and put into operation by means of an agreement that we will make with the ministry of health and the local government.

RURAL LIBRARY:

The largest community of the zone supports the bordering communities.  They depend on a population of 1,500 people made up of adults and children. The main activity is agriculture and cattle ranching and as a supplementary form, some inhabitants work in tourism as porters and cooks. In the past years they have also begun to serve food and lodging to tourist who arrive in their village. At the same time, they rely on an educational center for grammar; elementary and high school levels where the level of learning skills is very inadequate.  The school depends on a basic library, which we have helped in implementing with some materials, however it continues lacking the utmost support. The library is used only during school hours, Monday through Friday (8.00am to 1:30 p.m.). This schedule becomes a great limitation for the rural students who don’t have access in the evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, time whereupon they count on normally. This is why; we decided to construct a public library that allows students to work in the evenings, Saturdays and Sundays with access to all the community.  At the same time there will be courses to reinforce mathematics, computer skills and English, but we depend on volunteers to help in this project.
The library will depend on:
- Books for all levels grammar, elementary, high school and the university.
-Materials like notebooks, coloring supplies, crayons and others.
- Computers with Internet.
When you visit Cusco, please bring some books, color supplies and other educative materials that the children could use.

CATTLE DEVELOPMENT:

In the communities of Chaquepay, Kanacchimpa, Huayllaccocha, Chillipahua, Huarocondo and others, the raising of cattle is being promoted to improve their lifestyle and nutrition with a consultant's office employing a professional technician.
WAYKI TREK invests in the purchase of a milk cow with the purpose of helping economical growth and good nutrition for the children.  Milk is essential to improve infantile undernourishment that exists in the communities. This project is beginning with the first group that consists of 25 families. The objective is to buy 25 milk cows, that will have a professional technician in attendance to teach the families how to better care for the animals, since in these communities the main activities are agriculture and cattle ranching.

How can you help?

Additional Projects:

Fair Market: In the last 30 years, farmers have lived without attention from the central government. Pesticides and insecticides have become extremely expensive, but farmers are forced to cell their products at a cheap price and use intermediate vendors. To respond to this problem, we would like to start our own market where farmers can sell their products directly to the customers for a fair price. This market would benefit the farmer communities and the customer would receive quality products.

Communal Tourist Lodge: We are hoping to start a new tourist route that goes through different farmer communities. This route has rustic houses, some of them Inca buildings. There are also Inca sites with impressive views of snowy mountains and beautiful valleys. In these places, people live from the agriculture that they grow. They are considered as people in “extreme poverty.” They have no basic services and only a primary school, so children who want to continue with their studies have to go to bigger villages. To improve the way of life of these people, we would like to build a “Communal Tourist Lodge” where local people can work and interact with visitors. Women can make artisan clothes and young people can share music and dance. They can also sell organic foods to tourists passing through.

Washing Equipment: About 7,000 porters work on the Inca Trail from different Andean communities, about 300 entering the trail each day. After finishing their work on the fourth day of the trail, these porters have to clean the equipment. They wake up very early on the 4th day to catch the train to Ollantaytambo where they have to find a place to clean to clean the equipment because currently, there are no dedicated spots to do so. Many porters are mistreated as they try to finish this part of their job. Wayki fully supports a new project that the local government intends to implement that will build a facility for porters to wash the equipment.