January 6, 2005 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Photograph by Terry Winn
Micheline Dahm-Schiltges and her husband, Jacques Dahm, traveled to Peru and Bolivia from their home in Luxembourg 18 years ago because they wanted to experience another culture. But the poverty they encountered shocked them so much that the two schoolteachers decided to help form a charity to improve the lives of the poor in Latin America through economic development and education.
“In the cities, we saw so many people trying to sell anything just to have some money,” Ms. Dahm-Schiltges recalls. “And in the rural communities, there was nothing to eat, to drink, everything was so dry, with no possibility to cultivate anything. Everything was yellow instead of green.”
The organization they helped create, A Bridge to Latin America, gives rural people the tools and skills they need to support themselves so they will not be forced to move to overcrowded cities, where there is little hope of finding work. Agricultural engineers and other specialists employed by the organization teach villagers how to irrigate their land and grow crops that will be profitable to sell. Ms. Dahm-Schiltges notes, for example, the success of a project in the highlands of Peru, where some villagers have tripled their income by growing a new type of potato.
The organization has also expanded its work to help rural people in other ways. It built a boarding school in Bolivia so that children would not have to trek hours just to attend class. And in El Salvador, its volunteers train women as midwives and educate girls about the risks of having children at too young an age. To date, the organization has worked on nearly 240 projects in eight countries.
The couple runs the group out of their home to keep costs low. Like most charities in Europe, it gets most of its support from the government, but gifts from private sources account for about 15 percent of the $1.5-million annual budget. A quarterly newsletter helps to bring in gifts from individuals, says Ms. Dahm-Schiltges.
Here, Peruvian villagers in the highlands near Cuzco hear advice from an agricultural engineer on how to grow beans.
