A Rocky View County resident is using her recent trip to Peru to advocate on behalf of humanitarian organization World Vision. Elbow Valley’s Shawna Hart – who volunteers as a World Vision ambassador – travelled to Peru with the organization from July 6 to 15, and had the opportunity to visit three World Vision Area Development Projects (ADP) in Alto Chicama, El Milagro and Tierra Prometida. There, she said she learned about the educational, nutritional and disaster-relief programs currently underway. “It was so that we could get to know more about the programming,” she said. “It’s overwhelming, with how large and how much they do. It is very important that we continue to get sponsorship.” As an ambassador, Hart works with World Vision to promote its child sponsorship program, fundraises for the organization and raises awareness about its relief and development work. “We’re authenticating the process,” Hart said. “My parents sponsored when I was little and I was pen pals with these children, and I always wondered whether or not the money got through to this child.” It wasn’t until she was able to visit her own sponsor child in Guatemala, as an adult, that Hart said she finally saw the impact her sponsorship was making – not only for her sponsor child, but for the community, as well. The experience, she added, inspired her to become a World Vision ambassador. On her recent trip, Hart had the opportunity to meet a number of children she helped secure sponsorship for through her work as an ambassador. She also learned more about World Vision’s work in Peru, she said, by witnessing programs such as the “financial briefcase,” which provides training for teachers to implement entrepreneurial and financial education, or “Backpacks of Hope,” which are distributed to children during disasters like the flooding and landslides that occurred in Peru in 2017. Hart said she was struck to see that most of the help at the ADPs comes from local volunteers – not paid World Vision staff. Those volunteers, according to Hart, tend to partner with the organization because their children have benefitted from sponsorship. “Their volunteering is on a huge basis – it’s a daily thing, whereas I’m doing so little on this end,” she said. “It’s really inspired me to do more.” The training that World Vision provides sponsor children and families who live in ADPs – such as agricultural training and educational opportunities – significantly helps those families improve their quality of life, according to Hart. During her visit to Peru, Hart said, she met a man who had received seven chickens from World Vision, along with training to help him learn to raise them. He’s since been able to increase his coop to 19 birds, she said, which allows him to feed his daughters nutritious food and use income from selling eggs to help them pursue an education. “It was something so simple as chickens and two months of training, and it was pretty phenomenal to see the difference in his life and how proud he was, and how he’s able to share with the community,” Hart said. Hart added she believes the work World Vision does around the world is incredibly important, as there are many children in need. “I saw that even one child sponsorship there makes a huge difference,” she said.
