Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Katie Langridge / Daily Vidette Staff Photographer Dr. Patrice Olsen, a history professor at Illinois State University, presents "One Day in Amauta: Field Notes from a Lima Shantytown" at Global Review Thursday night.

"These kids have a rough go … but have eyes filled with hope," associate professor of history Patrice Olsen said when referring to the children living in Amauta, Peru.

According to Olsen, poverty strikes hard in this region of South America.

"Rural to urban migration accelerated after World War II," Olsen said. "The Latin American urban reality is extreme poverty in some cases."

Shantytowns make up a very large portion of South America's population.

"Over one-third of the whole world's urban dwellers live in slums," Olsen said. "That number represents one-sixth of the whole world's population."

With such large numbers of people immersed in poverty, certain organizations have been reaching out to help. The government, which Olsen described as close to non-existent among the shantytowns, studied the population living in such conditions.

"Various reports in and around Lima show that about 45 percent of the population is a part of those in poverty," she said. "There are no

Now, doctors and teachers volunteer their time in Amauta to help the ill and illiterate. While Dr. Olson's group toured the hillside towns near Amauta, they came across children who worked up to 30-hour workweeks in sewing and cooking houses.

The adults sell whatever small objects they can for scrap change, and Olson described the transactions as a "poor market" in which the poor sell to each other.
"Where you stand depends largely on what you can see and feel," Olson said. "The world looks a lot different from the slums."

The group of colleagues met with a human rights institute group from Peru that created self-help housing. Their slogan, which stood out in the minds of members of Olson's group, was "Hope does not come from Mars in a parachute."

Tanya Riddle, a junior health education major, visited the city of Arequipa to work in a school as an educator. "It was pretty barren," Riddle said. "They finally got running water last year."

ISU students have started a program that conducts micro-lending for workshops in Amouta that is available for all to join. Politics and Government Professor Carlos Parodi leads the group.

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