Global Volunteer Network has created an opportunity for participants to hike to the ancient city of Machu Picchu while helping a local community build a new facility for their feeding program, which feeds and distributes vitamins to 400 orphaned and disadvantaged children daily. The feeding program is run by a nun who also heads a local orphanage in Lamay. The children the program support come every day for lunch after school. Some of the children have traveled from other communities in the nearby mountains to go to school, and before returning home visit the Lamay lunch program to receive a meal and a vitamin before heading home. The town has recently provided a few old buses to transport some of the children who live farthest away, but some of the children used to walk

between 1-3 hours each way to get to and from school, and the lunch was, and continues to be, one of their only substantial meals of the day. Presently, the facilities for this lunch program are extremely inadequate to provide for such a great need. The program is run out of an empty room in a local church, but recently the church has begun renovations, and so the children have been forced to eat their meal crowded on a few benches in an open courtyard. With funds from the Machu Picchu hike, the goal is to build a new comidor (dining room) for this much deserving program which has touched so many children’s lives.

Global Volunteer Network has partnered with a small non-profit organization named Peruvian Hearts in its support of needy Peruvian orphanages and feeding programs. Peruvian Hearts was founded by Ana Dodson when she was only 11 years old. Ana was adopted as a baby from Cuzco, Peru and has grown up in the state of Colorado in the United States. When she visited Peru in 2003 with her mother, she visited the Hogar de Mercedes de Jesus Molina. She was moved by the girls’ existence, as they were suffering from malnutrition and had never received visitors in their remote location in the hills outside of Cuzco. When Ana returned home she was determined to do something to help the orphanage. She started Peruvian Hearts as a "kids helping kids" organization.

Since its inception, Peruvian Hearts has been so successful with the help they were able to offer the girls at the Hogar de Mercedes de Jesus Molina orphanage that they have since been able to branch out to other needy programs in the surrounding communities. Through the work of young people and donors throughout the United States, this small non-profit has managed to enable incredible progress in the projects it supports. Because of the growing number of needy children, however, there is still a remarkable need for continued support.

The next GVN Machu Picchu trek will take place in July 24 - August 1 2011.