Major FAQ-Peru

Room and Food

Where do I stay during the one-week language program? Where Do I stay during my volunteering program?

What do I eat? What about shower and restrooms? Do you accommodate special diet?

Most volunteers placed in Cusco projects stay at our home base – a permanent home set aside for international volunteers and manned with a local staff. Our home base provides a same-gender shared room and shared bathroom with running hot water and a “western” style toilet. Volunteers will have the ability to do laundry at the home base. Volunteers receive three prepared meals per day. If volunteers will be out of the house during lunch hour, volunteers can request a lunch "to go" that volunteers can take with volunteers or eat out. Meals are cuisine, which is traditional to Peru.

Our Cusco home base is located in the center of beautiful Cusco city. Most of our volunteers’ projects are located within 2-5 miles of the home base. Therefore, volunteers can simply walk to their projects or take a local taxi. Most necessary services for travelers are located within 2 km of the homebase: internet cafés, restaurants and grocery stores.

Occasionally, depending on volunteer traffic, available projects or distance to a volunteer’s assigned project, we may also place our volunteers with carefully pre-screened host families. Our host families are socially respected and experienced hosts of international volunteers. They have strong interest in our volunteers’ safety and well-being and demonstrate this with caution and care. In most host family situations, volunteers will share a room with another volunteer of the same gender. Volunteers receive three meals a day. Our host families do not offer laundry services, but some will happily take up the task for a small fee. This is up to volunteers to negotiate upon arrival. If volunteers choose to do their own laundry, most families are happy to let volunteers use their washbasins where volunteers wash by hand then line-dry their clothes.

Throughout the volunteer project, our local staff stays in contact with volunteers either with face-to-face visits or via email/telephone. Volunteers are always welcome at the local office in Cusco. If project placement is local, we request that volunteers stop by the office once a week to keep us posted on how they are doing with their home stay and project. If project placement is very far, then our local staff members maintain communication by either email and/or phone and try to visit every 2-4 weeks if possible.