Strategic Plan

Casa Chapi has grown to be a marquee school not only in the Colca Valley, but also throughout Southern Peru.  We will continue to strive for excellence at Casa Chapi and provide our students and teachers the resources necessary to reach greater heights.

 

The fact that Casa Chapi has grown to this stature as a private school, combined with our years of medical service, opens the opportunity to increase our impact with medical and educational services to children in partner schools throughout the Colca Valley.

 

A key ingredient to make this possible will be partnerships with American schools. We plan to include four U.S. partner schools by 2018, and six by 2021. The interaction between these schools in the USA and Peru will provide the opportunity for all students to experience different cultures, languages, and standards of living.

 

We are currently in the process of signing agreements with both U.S. and Peruvian partner schools, which will allow us to join forces with school administrators, the local health outpost and appropriate nonprofit partners in order to create a sustainable program.

Quechua Benefit began in 1996 with our first dental mission in Macusani. Since our inception, we have been committed to providing free medical, dental and optical clinics throughout remote regions of Peru. Doctors and dentists from the USA travel year after year, expanding our reputation for service and generosity to more than 50 villages above 12,000 feet elevation.  We continue this tradition today.

 

The highlands of Peru are largely under-served by almost any measure, particularly for women and children. In addition to our medical missions, we will begin a preventative medicine campaign with high impact services to children. This program will be implemented in the public school system and concentrate on six basic services:

  • Anti-parasitic medications for the entire population of all Quechua Benefit designated Healthy Communities.
  • Dental fluoride treatments for children
  • Testing for anemia and treatment when needed
  • Basic optical testing and eyeglasses for children when needed
  • Data collection and quantification to facilitate public health impact studies that guide our program for maximum efficacy
  • School uniforms to families who cannot afford them and often are precluded from school as a result

 

This program should be cost effective and scalable to include large numbers of children. The pilot program that initially focuses on the Colca Valley served 1,200 children and a total population of 6,000. This program can also be scaled up to include the entire Colca Valley population of 40,000 people and significantly larger numbers of recipients when additional resources become available.

Quechua Benefit has been involved with disaster relief for over 10 years. We have supplied medical services, food, clothing, and warm blankets to those most effected by natural disaster such as catastrophic cold or earthquakes. We need to develop capabilities to respond rapidly, and potentially have inventory of items that we believe will be needed most often.

Quechua Benefit’s plans include the construction of a world-class Quechua Cultural Center at Casa Chapi. The Cultural Center will feature a rotating exhibit of Pre-Columbian cultural items (provided by the Peruvian Cultural Ministry), and will highlight the nearby Pre-Incan Uskallacta ruins and other ancient Quechua cultural icons. The Cultural Center will also be a multi-purpose facility for performances, both by the children at Casa Chapi as well as partner schools the local community.

 

The Ministry of Culture has approved of this concept and is actively participating in the design of the facility. Casa Chapi is situated along the road to the Condor Cross, where 1,000 foreign tourists travel every day, and we expect to host up to 50 of those visitors a day. Not only will the Cultural Center be financially self-sufficient by charging admission fees, but it will also provide Quechua Benefit with a continual list of prospective donors.

 

Fundraising is key to any nonprofit origination. Currently, our organization is currently supported primarily by individual alpaca breeders in the United States.  These donors have been very generous, but they are a relatively small group.  We plan to make our organization more self-sustaining, year-by-year, with the goal of 100% sustainability by 2021. To do that, we need to diversify our fundraising base and bring in revenue from additional activities. The following are the main focuses of our fundraising:

  • Existing donor base – continue to foster and develop our generous current donor base. We intend to expand our monthly giving segment, also known as the Casa Chapi Family Tree of Giving program. It currently generates more than $100,000 every year.
  • Programmatic multi-year for the Healthy Communities initiative which is a planned medical outreach program for children in remote communities  that will attract support from foundations and corporations and major donors.  We will move forward with this once we have a statistically documented, successful working model.
  • Partner Schools – Increase the number of U.S. partner schools from one to four (and eventually six) and hold an annual fundraising event at each institution.
  • Donors from the Cultural Center – Once the Cultural Center is in operation, it has the potential to generate up to 50 high-income donor candidates every day.  We intend to charge admission, provide a movie theater telling the Quechua Benefit story, offer visitors fresh brewed Peruvian coffee in the coffee shop, and encourage them to buy high quality local handicrafts made available through Alliyma.
  • Education with a Destination Peru tours have grown to represent a significant income source. Quechua Benefit by way of 20 years of service in the highlands is uniquely qualified to conduct culturally rich tours with the full participation of the local communities.  Our current tour is alpaca focused, but we plan to add a fiber and textile arts focused tours in the future.
  • Expand our social media and online presence through the rolling out our state of the art website, Instagram, Facebook and Peru Unplugged blog.  Blog topics will include Peruvian travel highlights, Quechua Benefit’s charitable work, Casa Chapi stories, medical mission stories, and occasionally alpaca insights.
  • Alliyma Project – Alliyma is a for-profit company with all of its net income going to Quechua Benefit. The focus of the company is to export items from Peru to be sold in the United States. Our specific focus will be on Peruvian-sourced products: commercial yarn, hand spun yarn, alpaca products for the home, embroidery, weavings, coffee and chocolates, and agricultural imports such as quinoa.
  • Foundation and Corporate sponsors – Once the preventative medicine campaign and Alliyma are in full operation, this platform should allow us to achieve our long time goal of foundation and corporate sponsorship.

Alliyma is a public benefit corporation will fulfill three Quechua Benefit goals:

  • Establish income for rural women through job training and a connection to the world market for products such as yarn, weavings, and embroidered and hand-knitted goods
  • Market commercial-manufactured alpaca yarn through licensing agreements with major yarn retailers, branded by the Quechua Benefit story
  • Create a sustainable cash flow to finance Quechua Benefit programs in Peru – 100% of all profits will funnel directly back into our social justice program