Lima.– After more than fourteen years implementing life-saving projects of health and HIV/AIDS, food security/agriculture, water/sanitations, education and disaster relief in the Dominican Republic's impoverished and vulnerable sugarcane plantations rural "batey" communities and Haiti's isolated border regions, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) now seeks to climb some of the highest mountains of Peru to save children in desperate living conditions.

Up at 16,000 feet in Peru's Andes mountains native families must survive below-freezing temperatures and the lack of access to adequate supplies of food, clothing, shelter or basic medical services, essential medicines and antibiotics.

In Puno - the capital of Puno Region and Puno Province, a city of more than 100,000 people on the shores of Lake Titicaca in southeastern Peru, local inhabitants are horribly poverty-stricken. The local economy is based on agriculture and cattle raising. 

Unfortunately, both of these ventures present major obstacles and offer few rewards to those pursuing them. Illiteracy is as high as 22%, especially among women. Diseases, hunger and malnutrition are related to extreme poverty, lack of clean water and sanitation infrastructures.

In response to this crisis affecting the health and growth of children in these mountain villages, BRA has joined hands with its partners to deliver emergency medical/dental assistance and launch a new Child's Health project involving the application of doses of multivitamins and deworming medicines to more than 500 children and pregnant women who are nutritionally at risk. Future BRA projects will involve general health, food security and education.

For more information on BRA's humanitarian work in Peru, Haiti or the Dominican Republic, visit our website and donate online at www.bateyrelief.org. For regular updates, follow/like us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Batey.Relief.Alliance) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/bateyrelief).