I am very happy and excited by the experiences that we are going to have throughout this Volunteer Program and I sincerely hope that we make strong bonds of friendship between us: volunteers from countries so distant and different but who are united by the vocation of service and deep desire to help and love.

I know that in this Program the volunteers are people with a great vocation in service, social conscience and deep desire to be active agents of change to combat poverty and discrimination, to promote of human rights, social inclusion and who are concern about the environmental issue and global warming. And sincerely I am very honored to be involved next to you, brave volunteers.

I am in my last cycle of Industrial Engineering in PUCP (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú).
It is a career that has required much effort and dedication on my part by the strong demand of the Faculty of Engineering. Because of my career I could have a pre-profesional stage in different private sector companies: for example I participated in the implementation of the ERP SAP in the module of Manufacturing in a brewer (Backus & Johnston), then in the area of certification of Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001), Environmental Management (ISO 14001), Occupational Health and Safety (OHSAS 18000) at Bureau Veritas del Perú and now I’m doing a stage in the area of Technical Management in Talma Menzies SRL, a company that is dedicated to provide Airport Services like ground handling, passenger services, cargo handling and storage.

I must confess however, that I am really motivated to work in areas like Social Responsibility and Social Management and contribute directly with my profession to have a more articulated work between Government, Private Companies and Civil Society to improve the quality of life from my dear Peru and decrease its high, and alarming rates of poverty.

I am also a fervent promoter of free software, thanks to which I could expand my knowledge in systems topics. Now I am an actively participate in the group Debian Peru (distribution of an operating system GNU / Linux) and I promote the use of free software specially Ubuntu and Gnome. For me, its promotion is a matter of ethics because here, in Peru, there is unfortunately a large spread of pirated software (referred to Windows) and many people don’t know that we can have other free options with a great quality like Linux.

I’ve been doing volunteer work since 2004 in different contexts: initially with friends of my college where we had worked with children in poverty by providing help in math, language, theatre and martial arts. Then I was a volunteer at the Hospital of the Child and then I also participated as a volunteer giving advice in developing Pymes. Right now I am volunteer at the “Magis” in the Asylum with Allison and other volunteers.

This last experience of volunteer work is one of the most enriching experience that I am taking because it allows me to further develop the ability to listen and understand the loneliness of the oldie people: our beloved grandparents; to interact with them and show them affection and love as many of them are indigent and have no relatives to visit them. Another reason why this program is very special is because we always make a feedback of our work. We wonder if what we are doing really works, what more we could do and what we need to improve. This debate is very important to take adequate action: Reflection and Action goes hand in hand and I try to adapt this conception over all aspects of my life.

Thank you very much for participating in this experience and thanks a lot for read all my large presentation and sorry for all the grammatical errors. I hope to learn a lot from you all!

My best wishes!

Diana