Lake Union Crew to help build community center in Peru

On a barren stretch of sand dunes near the coast of central Peru, a community of 3,200 people is struggling to eke out a living. It's a daily battle, with most jobs in Lima, an hour to the north. But the residents are trying.

And now, someone has noticed.

The Lake Union Crew Outreach Foundation will take 82 volunteers over the course of eight weeks to the village of San Francisco de Asis, starting Dec. 16, to build a community center. This is the second international-service project the foundation has tackled, and its leaders say they hope to continue such action in coming years.

"I started Lake Union Crew in 1998, so it's just been a natural outgrowth of what we do here," said program director Rome Ventura. "The rowing community is a very generous community, and they're crazy hard workers, so to be able to do concentrated work for 12 hours a day in another country is very exciting for them."

Since its inception, the rowing center has worked to provide opportunities for diverse groups of people. At first, Ventura said, the organization was just focused on rowing activities. They raised money for kids to go to national and international competitions, organized rowing programs for blind people and worked with foster families so kids in foster care could row with their parents.

"But these past two years, we wanted to do something a little more sizable, more international," Ventura said.

Last year, the foundation took a team of about 60 volunteers to Lesotho, a tiny kingdom surrounded by South Africa, to build a community-meeting hall. This year, they chose Peru because of a connection forged with Ericka Lock, a native Peruvian who lives in Seattle but has been returning to Peru and working alongside her mother in the community of San Francisco de Asis for the past several years.

"A lot of poor people migrate to the city and take over the dunes. These people in particular — they pretty much are in the category of extreme poverty," Lock explained. "They make less than $1 a day, and the average is five members in the family."

These communities, she said, don't have anyone speaking on their behalf in government, so they reach out and try to find someone to represent them and make their needs known.

What they need right now is a place for child care, education and skills-development training.

To that end, the foundation is going to build a 50-foot by 100-foot community center, complete with day care, a vocational center and a commercial-grade communal kitchen.

The community center will provide space for children whose parents are at work, as well as a place for people of all ages to receive training to find better jobs. All of the building materials have been purchased at cost or less, and many companies and individuals have donated tables, chairs, kitchen equipment, clothing and toys. To date, the foundation has raised $140,883 of its $150,000 goal.

But its members are not doing all the work. San Francisco de Asis will provide 20 volunteers.

"The goals here are to sustain the center, that the people continue progressing, that they're happy, and that they participate in the improvement of their own lives," explained Ericka's mother, Nelida Chavez de Lock, who lives in Peru. "We want them to all do their part."

Chavez de Lock hopes that this community can be a model for other Peruvian villages. "We're going to give our whole effort to make sure this comes out well."

Besides giving people the chance to improve life, the project promises to mix in a little global culture: Seven volunteers from Lesotho will fly to Peru — their first trip out of South Africa.

"Having the African kids come over there is going to be a riot," said 21-year-old Emily Bayuk-Johnson, who went to Lesotho for six weeks last year and will be in Peru with Ventura for the entire four months of preparation and project work. "Having those three different communities coming together to build something that's going to be really useful is super gratifying."

For Conal Groom, the rowing club's head coach, the trip to Peru is a chance to give back to the global community.

"It's a wonderful thing to put a smile on a face of one person, never mind a community!" Groom wrote in an e-mail. "I love to work hard and create tangible things. I get to do that and leave a group of people a building that houses their future."

It seems people on both ends of the project can't wait to see what happens.

"It's a very special thing, that this group of volunteers from Seattle, this whole community, wants to do this project with us," Chavez de Lock said. "We are going to be very grateful."

Molly Rosbach: 206-464-2311 or mrosbach@seattletimes.com