CUDA’s Journey: Opportunities and Impact
Before I tell you some incredible things that happened in 2024, I need to say this: we need your help for 2025. But before I tell you what that looks like, let me start with some snapshots of amazingness.
Snapshots
Katie and I are consistently floored by the contributions and donations that have made possible the last 10 years of our work and work that we’ve witnessed through CUDA:
Just today our amazing partner at Cedar Lane in Tullahoma, Melisha Berridge, sent me a scan of a $5,000 grant awarded to CUDA through a connection with Katie’s aunt and uncle.
CUDA got $2,000 this year just because of employer donation matching through our former co-workers.
Unbelievable partners like the Bobbie Solley Foundation and Tulsa Christian Foundation have covered salaries of our Living Libraries and Community Development teams to do the amazing, constant, everyday work of walking alongside humans in Arequipa to move together toward a greater flourishing.
Some of you have set up automatic donations and have been giving monthly to CUDA for yearssssss.
Some of you are part of churches that support us unwaveringly because you’re proud of what this neighbor-loving, sustainable, in-breaking kingdom work looks like.
Just a couple weeks ago a new group of students that we got to work with for three months surprised us with a gift at the closing banquet: a contribution to CUDA.
Consider us baffled and in awe at all of this, big and small, and together so much bigger than the minute presence of our small family here in Arequipa. Thank you.
So before I get to the heroics of Paty, Lucia, Nancy, Carlos, Nohelia, and the amazing people they’ve worked with this year in transformative ways, let me tell you why I need your help:
Help
2025 is going to be our biggest year of all time for Living Libraries. We have a team of four trainers, all in and incredibly gifted, which means in addition to two second-year schools, we are partnering with 39 new classrooms in 3 new schools. That’s a staggering 51 teachers and 1,560 kids!
Here’s the deal. 39 new classrooms in 2025 means 39 mini-libraries—reading modules in each classroom to facilitate learning new comprehension strategies for the teachers and getting books in the hands of these kids, many of whom have never had a book to read for fun. Each mini-library costs $770 ($94 of that is for a well-built wooden shelf system, and the rest of which is buying 90 books from three different publishers that give us significant discounts. We buy from Scholastic Español that gives us 50% off and another Spanish and Peruvian publisher).
So, here I am asking for your help to make this possible: we’re looking for 39 backers of these mini-libraries. Calling on your church groups, book clubs, pickleball associations, knitting alliance, community organizations, troops and teams, classes and coveys: will you donate a mini-library to a classroom in Arequipa?
Our school year starts in March, which means we could really use your gift before year-end or in January/February 2025. We would love to honor our partners with a name-plate on the mini-library, and with a video or call with the classroom once they start reading the books. Where do you go? Here! That's CUDA Peru dot org slash join. https://cudaperu.org/join. Thank you!
What comes next is the story of why this work is so special, transformative even. If you’ve made it this far, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your love and support.
CUDA’s Story in 2024
We are theChristian Urban Development Association. We aim to break cycles of urban poverty and make way for justice, wellbeing, and joy because of Jesus and the kingdom of God. In 2024 that looks like a growing, powerhouse Living Libraries program, and a stunning,developingCommunity Development focus.
We put a libraries in public schools where there were previously no children’s books, and train the teachers with reading comprehension strategies over the course of two years to get that school ready to function on its own with a reading program. We read the Bible with a pocket of marginalized women and teach personal finance in Arequipa's women’s prison as our part of this community’s development.
We do this because we believe that when God’s kingdom breaks into a community, things get better. We believe that faith in Jesus leads to loving your neighbor in sustainable ways that make a community stronger and more able to participate in peace and reconciliation in a community.
Living Libraries
2024 was our biggest year to date: We worked with 50 teachers and principals weekly, as well as the 1,450 kids in their classrooms spread out over five schools. Our change last year to work weekly with teachers over two years extended our development plan significantly: now we have about 60% more contact hours with the teachers over the course of two years. This has provided more opportunities for the teachers to ask questions and for us to give feedback and support. This has resulted in a significantly better training experience.
I mentioned in an email a year ago that this year we would be working with a new school that connects with one of our missions as a house church group. Paty has been mentoring girls weekly at a children’s home for the last several years, alongside a couple other members of the house church more recently. Because of education development issues they saw in the girls after the pandemic, we banded together as a church to hire a teacher part-time to do specific reading and homework help with girls that were falling way behind. This connected us to the girls’ school in Pachacutec, and through our processes of vetting schools for Living Libraries, we started working this year with the school that about 30 girls from the home attend.
It’s been a beautiful merging of worlds and work to think that we can do something significant for the teachers of these girls, and that they and all the other girls who will live in this home in the future will benefit from the hard work these teachers put in to grow and develop for the sake of their students’ development. It’s justice, wellbeing, and joy—little by little, child by child, teacher by teacher–that’s our vision. It has been a challenge but the first year so far has been a success story on all fronts with them. Here are two videos that capture a piece of this: one from a teacher who works at that school; another from a student named Arlet.
To date we have trained almost 200 teachers in 20 schools, 18 of which have graduated the program with the 2 at the halfway point and 3 more signed up to start in 2025. We’ve trained almost 200 teachers and principals and have worked directly with about 5,000 students. By my count, the teachers’ ongoing impact has reached another 5,000 kids for a total of 10,000 students who have been impacted directly or indirectly through Living Libraries. The development process is intentionally slow and relies on our team to work with teachers in the long term because that’s how we believe a true impact is made.
This is a drop in the bucket, but it’s an offering that God will take and multiply as we continue to work and grow. Reflecting on 2024, we thank God for your ongoing support. The Bobbie Solley Foundation’s support of salaries alongside other monthly partners (you know who you are!) is an indescribable help, as our program depends on the salaries of Lucía, Nancy, Carlos, and Nohelia to do the hard work of mentoring, working alongside these teachers, working with kids, day in and day out. Thank you for making this happen this year. God is honored by your generosity. To God be the glory for the provision of the funds and the ongoing, hard work of education development in Arequipa.