INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
In 2002, Cora Staats of Dutch nationality, visited Peru for the first time. She was motivated by knowing the different realities between Holland and Peru. This fed her entrepreneurial spirit with a feeling of empathy for this country which is diverse in culture, geography, economy, history and social reality.
Cora worked during this time for one year as a volunteer in a social project of the Municipality of Cusco for malnourished children. The bad social conditions of children inspired her sensitivity to do something about this predicament, which was then transformed into a personal commitment to do something. Her strategy: to know and understand the reality.After her year of volunteering she returned to the Netherlands, where she told her friends family of her hometown Leiden (in the Western part of Holland) about the situation in Cusco. Together with them she formed a foundation called ‘’Vilcabamba”.
She returned to Peru in 2003, with the determination to realize her goals. She visited NGOs and other organizations involved in the same issues. With this eagerness, contact was made with an economist named Alberto Carpio Joyas who worked at CARITAS a catholic NGO in Cusco.
He gave strong support in their social initiatives, to establish the non-profit organization called: CEDNA (Centre for the Development of Children and Adolescents) in Spanish: "Centro para el Desarrollo del Niño y Adolescente" and this organization was established in the public records of Cusco in July 25, 2003.
Thus began the process of identifying projects and managing them, with the starting of raising financial funds with the help of the Dutch Foundation Vilcabamba.
In 2004, after several trips, coordination and management, a first draft of a health project with undernourished children was identified. It was proposed to the Dutch Foundation Vilcabamba, with the prospect of being funded. Before Cora has visited several cities and projects in northern and southern Peru, including projects in Bolivia (La Paz, Cochabamba).
Her strategy: patience and conviction to persevere in its purposes. This period in the history of CEDNA was named as; ‘the expected feeding action’.
In 2005 CEDNA started their first project
The foundation gave a small budget and CEDNA began its first health project called "Miski Wawa" (sweet child in Quechua), with a local community called "Kenyi Fujimori" in the very poor urban district of Cusco. The project consisted out of: helping to diminish the status of malnutrition of 60 children in that area.
This first experiment was done with the collaboration of people with little experience and qualifications of the subject. With the inexperienced staff we were not able to integrate the beneficiary population and we did not realize all our goals as planned.
This experience motivated CEDNA to develop their first strategic plan to re-orientate the project's objectives for the coming year. It began to develop better profiles for new projects, applying correctives to the experience. This period in the history of the CEDNA was named: ‘the initial impulse’.
In 2006 strengthened by the experience of the previous year, CEDNA proposed a new project to the foundation, called "Training Project for the Generation of Self-Employment and Job Placement’. The project consisted out of training very poor young people from urban areas outside Cusco for self-employment and employability. Better strategies were implemented, such as strategic alliances with the community, the District Municipality of Santiago and the Education Ministry in the city of Cusco. These new strategies turned out to be very successful. This success motivated the management to start their third project called ‘Miski Wawa II’, which consisted out of child nutrition and family integration in the northwest sector of the city of Cusco. The main objective was to diminish malnutrition of the children in this area. With a more technical approach and greater coordination with the beneficiary population, this stage in its history was known as, ‘a train in motion’.
In the year 2007, the health projects ‘Miski Wawa II and III’ continued. We should have trained personnel and we obtained a larger budget for our projects. The health project ‘Miski Wawa III’ was planned from September 2007.
This all opened up new possibilities for the managers of CEDNA to outline new commercial projects in Cusco to finance their own social projects of CEDNA in the future. Therefore, it was necessary to renew the strategic plan of 2005 in this period in its´ history, because commercial projects were a new strategy in order to become sustainable.