Yamileth Perez
The Director of the Artisan Program, Yamileth Perez, is an inspiration to all who meet her. She is a single mother of four daughters; their home is in one of the poorest and most dangerous barrios in Managua. This is the location of La Chureca, the vast city landfill where 1000 people live and work, digging through mountains of trash and filth to collect specific products to sell to intermediaries to be recycled. Half of those who work in the dump are children, who begin working when they are as young as five years old. Yamileth spent many years working in the dump and her small children helped by washing plastic in their home, which was a shack made of plastic and cardboard. Now Yamileth lives in a home of solid concrete cinderblocks and is earning a good salary working for Esperanza en Acción.
Yamileth has developed her skills to become the Director of the Artisan Program and she is vitally important to our success. Yamileth and our executive director partner together as a team; we could not survive without her leadership and coordination efforts, as well as her hard work in many areas of actualizing our mission. In addition to working with artisans, Yamileth teaches in our Economic Justice Education Center and is in charge of sales in our Fair Trade store.
In addition to her work with Esperanza en Acción, Yamileth volunteers as a health promoter, providing a base house for malaria prevention and care in her barrio, coordinates a soccer league for at-risk youth and is a community organizer for the Nicaraguan Community Movement. She has also volunteered in the areas of infant survival and reproductive health, teaching in the community about the importance of vaccinations, pre-natal care, birth control and human sexuality. In addition, she has worked as a monitor in the dump for the International Program to Eliminate Child Labor.
You may contact Yamileth (in Spanish) at [email protected].
Yamileth has developed her skills to become the Director of the Artisan Program and she is vitally important to our success. Yamileth and our executive director partner together as a team; we could not survive without her leadership and coordination efforts, as well as her hard work in many areas of actualizing our mission. In addition to working with artisans, Yamileth teaches in our Economic Justice Education Center and is in charge of sales in our Fair Trade store.
In addition to her work with Esperanza en Acción, Yamileth volunteers as a health promoter, providing a base house for malaria prevention and care in her barrio, coordinates a soccer league for at-risk youth and is a community organizer for the Nicaraguan Community Movement. She has also volunteered in the areas of infant survival and reproductive health, teaching in the community about the importance of vaccinations, pre-natal care, birth control and human sexuality. In addition, she has worked as a monitor in the dump for the International Program to Eliminate Child Labor.
You may contact Yamileth (in Spanish) at [email protected].
