CU Peru

Our goal is to provide community health workers with the knowledge and resources they need to ensure their community members are treated appropriately when they become ill. We also work with them on how to educate their communities on public health issues like hand washing, spreading disease, healthy eating, and more.

CU Peru works with students from the University of Colorado Medical Campus to create curriculums that are in line with the Peruvian Ministry of Health along with the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) and World Health Organization (WHO). We also work with medical advisors to ensure accurate and relevant content in our curriculum. Furthermore, we partner with other NGO's in the area to ensure consistency in our trainings with that of their programs. An integral partnership that we have in the region we work in is SOCIEMAP, a group of medical students who ensure cultural accuracy in the curriculum.

Two times per year our student members travel to hold Community Health Worker trainings. Future strategies include the introduction of a Train the Trainer program where advanced community health workers can learn how to teach and hold trainings during the times that CU Peru is not in the area.

Our organization has a Board of Directors with health care knowledge and expertise. We also have the student members and advisory boards to ensure we have the capacity and man power to continue the work year over year. Recently, an executive director has been hired to oversee operations, development and programming. This will allow CU Peru to continue to grow and move forward by having someone with institutional knowledge, innovation and vision.

We also continue to expand all our strategic partnerships and develop a larger more robust donor group.

Most importantly, we have been doing work in this region since 2010, so we have the support and trust of the community health workers that we serve.

Since 2010 CU Peru has trained community health workers (CHW's) from over 60 villages in the Peruvian Amazon. Based on test scores and evaluation during the trainings CHW's have shown significant improvement in regards to knowledge and skills during post-testing.

CU Peru has also worked directly with communities to work with them on projects that would help communities become healthier. This includes building fences around sports field to keep animals away, working on teaching the community hand washing skills, and working on creating healthy meal planning based on what is available in the communities.