Wearing her characteristic black woolen ski hat even in the blistering heat of Lima summer, Rosita Muñoz purposefully ascends the steep hillside of Santa Cruz, an enormous bucket of cement firmly gripped in each hand. She passes the unwieldy bucket up to a neighbor and immediately turns to go back down and retrieve more. She is working tirelessly at finishing what will be the last of three staircases that have been inaugurated in Santa Cruz, where Rosita acts as a community leader.
Santa Cruz is a small community of around 25, comprised mainly of young families who moved to Lima together from Huancayo when they learned there were large swathes of open land available outside the city. The small community sits at the top of a precipitous stretch of hillside where damp winters and dusty summers create a hazardous, accident-prone ascent for community members. Having learned of MEDLIFE's staircase undertakings in other areas, Rosita approached Project Coordinator, Carlos Benavides, in July of 2011 and proposed that her burgeoning community be next to receive assistance. 
After several MEDLIFE staff members visited Santa Cruz, most were hesitant to undertake the project. Due to its daunting altitude and distance from any navigable roads below, carrying building materials was going to require a fortified and committed community. Thanks largely to the tenacious and determined spirit of Rosita, Santa Cruz presented MEDLIFE with just that. After waiting out the remaining weeks of an intractable winter, neighbors organized an impressive "cadena" or chain of workers who labored for days, bucket by bucket, to bring sand and water to the future site of their first staircase.
Rosita headed weekly meetings in Santa Cruz in the months leading up to the project, inspiring community members to participate and volunteer.
"I want my kids to have better opportunities than I did," said the mother of three. "My own mom was a single mother and nothing was ever easy."
During every stage of all three staircases, Rosa worked tirelessly, carrying buckets and rocks, mixing cement, positioning handrails, painting, and planting trees. The relatively young community now stands out against neighboring areas as a developed example of organization and initiative, its three bright red staircases striking and visible throughout Pamplona.
MEDLIFE now hopes to repay the persevering Rosita for all her hard work by helping her treat a painful kidney problem she has been suffering from for the past two years. The wrenching pain didn't stop the community leader from sweating through hours of hard manual labor, and MEDLIFE is eager to help her manage the financial strain of managing her illness.
At Public Assembly, Community Members Ask Congressional President for Basic Services
Written by Laura Keen
Pueblo is a Spanish word that for me does not have an exact English equivalent. In its most literal sense it means village or small town, but beyond that it also carries an infectious and emotionally charged quality of proletarian community. El Pueblo is more often a force or an attitude than it is a means to describe a modest settlement.
The nuance of the word was only reinforced for me when I attended a public assembly last week in Villa Maria del Triunfo, one of the southern districts where we work in Lima. Large banners hung from the stage and plastered on the walls of the makeshift tent proclaimed the event to be a time for "Escuchando tu Voz, el Congreso y el Pueblo," which loosely translates to "Listening to your voice, Congress and the People."
The guest of honor was Peruvian Congressional President Daniel Abugattás Majluf, who greeted attendees before seating himself on stage alongside the mayors of seven participating Lima districts. More than 2,000 people attended the assembly where representatives of various social factions, including students, teachers, local community leaders, and workers, were given three minutes to speak directly to their elected officials.
MEDLIFE has been working in Pamplona Alta since March 2010. The majority of Mobile Clinics and MEDLIFE Fund projects in Peru serve the communities of Pamplona Alta. Zenobia Gonsalves, our media intern in Lima, captured the shots below.
Located in the hills surrounding Lima, Pamplona Alta is a shantytown, or pueblo joven, characterized by conditions of extreme poverty and a lack of infrastructural development. Now housing more than 20,000 residents, it was first populated in the 1990's when massive numbers of Peruvians immigrated to Lima from the rural countryside -- either displaced by the Shining Path terrorism that marked this decade, or looking for better opportunity in Peru's capital city.
Dirt paths crisscross the valley walls, reaching the families who reside at the top -- a long climb from the main avenue below. Can you spot the three MEDLIFE staircases?
