During the summer of 2010, Alicia Boswell headed up our first Sinsicap service learning program. The students stayed in the town of Simbal, and each day they traveled up the valley to work with the town Collambay. They worked on public beautification projects in the main plaza of Collambay, worked at the local elementary school and organized town meetings. We hope the work done this summer will lead to a lasting and productive relationship with the town of Collambay.

This year our Archaeological field school moved up to the Sinsicap Valley to do some survey. The students spent half of their program learning survey techniques, and helping to conduct an archaeological survey of the Sinsicap valley and the surrounding hills. In the second half of the program, the studnets were able to assist MOCHE with some rescue archaeological excavation at the Chimu sight of Cerro La Virgen, near the city of Trujillo. Cerro La Virgen was being actively destroyed by quarrying for rock, sand and gravel. Learn more about the Cerro La Virgen sight and MOCHE's efforts to protect it by clicking the linke below or by clicking on the news feeds on our home page.

Again this year we partnered up with the UNC chapter of Nourish International and Engineers without Borders to work on the Ciudad de dios sanitation projects and to promote health education throughout the valley. The group of volunteers worked with community members to start a wide spread latrine project in Ciudad de Dios and we organized MOCHE's second annual health fair. We expanded the fair and moved it to a donated facility in Bello Horizonte. The fair included a doctor, a nurse, a psychologist, an OBGYN and many other health care professionals from Trujillo, who volunteered their time and expertise to make our health fair a great success.

We also partnered with the Ohio State branch of Nourish International and we worked with the water committee of Cerro Blanco to help provide a sustainable water reservior for the community. The community already had a clean water line, but the flow was insufficient during peak hours of the day. The new water reservior will allow the community members to withdraw water as needed during the day.

MOCHE is proud to announce the completion of our first alternative spring break program. Students from UNC traveled to Peru for 10 days to take part in our tree-part spring break program. We had an education group working with the elementary age children of Ciudad de Dios, an archaeology group learning about Andean Archaeology and heritage preservation and we had a group begin the preliminary assessment of the proposed Avendaño eco-reserve.

MOCHE partnered up with UNC Nourish International to conduct a valley wide health assessment. We conducted the customized survey with the help of nurses form Trujillo. We gained a large amount of data that, once analyzed, will give us valuable information about the health problems in the valley. This information will be utilized in the regional health clinic to taylor health care to the needs of the communities. In addition we ran a health fair at the Ciudad de Dios school house in order to educate the population about healthful practices. We also started a pilot latrine program in Ciudad and held prenatal classes to educate women about childbirth.

In 2008 MOCHE partnered with Nourish International, Engineers without Borders, Duke Engage and the community members of to construct a clean water delivery system for the town of Ciudad de Dios. The community members now have clean, running water that travels down a pipe that originates at a sustainable, gravity fed spring box over 3 km up the valley. Our volunteers worked week in and week out, logging over 4,440 hours of service in just one summer. The spring box is still active and the town of Ciudad is still enjoying the running water. We continue to work with Engineers without Borders and the town water council to ensure the water line's continued success.