According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, the rains have hit 18 of the country’s 24 regions, causing suffering to more than 190,000 people and damaging more than 28,000 homes. Particularly hard hit are communities located along the major Andean rivers in Cusco and Puno in the south.

With a $100,000 grant, Oxfam is supporting its local partner, PREDES, to help 529 families living in temporary shelters in the provinces of Anta, Calca, and Urubamba.

"At the moment, we're improving the temporary shelters to ensure they have clean water and basic sanitation, and so avoid major health problems", said Oxfam’s Elizabeth Cano, who is coordinating the humanitarian response for the organization.

Work includes the installation of separate toilets for men, women, and children as well as the distribution of hygiene kits equipped with basics such as toothpaste and soap. Oxfam and PREDES are also working with civil defense committees to help communities and local authorities improve coordination to be better prepared for future natural events.

"The only thing we haven't lost is our health and our lives,” said Eufemia Araníbar, a member of the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood committee in the district of Izcuchaca. "We haven't lost our children or our husbands. Everything else we can rebuild, because we have our health", she tells us firmly.

In Cusco, a night that won't be forgotten

In Cusco, on Saturday, Jan. 23, people were already looking with concern at the clouds in the sky and the swollen rivers. Persistent rain had caused the rivers to rise, particularly at their confluence points. In a matter of hours, the Vilcanota, Jatumayo and Huatanay rivers and Huacarpay Lake had overflowed.

"Since Saturday 23, we've been in a state of alert, protecting ourselves, putting sandbags along the edge of the river. But it overflowed upstream, where we didn't expect it, and the houses have collapsed,” said Urbana Huamán, a 43-year-old single mother from Anta Province, as she showed a team from Oxfam the curved shape of a nearby river and lamented the miscalculation.

While in some areas residents stayed on the alert, elsewhere they had observed a reduction in the turbulence of the river and, instead of going out to keep watch and put up barriers, they went to bed, assuming they were safe.

"During the night, the water came and caught us unaware,” said 34-year-old Eufemia Araníbar. “Some people were awake, digging ditches, but some of us were asleep. Suddenly we were woken up by shouting and whistling. When I stood up, I felt water on the floor. My shoes were already wet.”

The first thing she did was to get her children out.

"We couldn't save anything, just a few clothes,” added Araníbar. “The water took everything. It took my pigs, my guinea pigs, my chickens..." And with them she lost she lost her savings.

Since that January night, the rain has not stopped. In March, the Quesermayo, Antarhualla and Kitamayo rivers in Calca Province broke their banks. There have also been landslides and more homes have been destroyed.

Now, it’s all gone—their home and their livelihoods--destroyed in floods triggered by heavy rain in the mountains of southern Peru. Across the country, the rains have affected more than 190,000 people. Eighteen of Peru’s 24 regions have been hit, including Cusco, which has experienced unprecedented amounts of rainfall.

"Suddenly we found ourselves with no house, no business,” said Salinas, as she showed an Oxfam team the plot of land on the river bank where her house used to stand and where now there is only debris.

"I didn't want to leave. I had to be carried out,” Salinas said, describing how the river water rose hip-deep in her house. She wanted to save her goods and her husband's work tools. Three days after she was evacuated, the house collapsed. Now the couple is living in the temporary shelter in a stadium, thinking about how to start over again.

María Gutiérrez, 50, from the district of Izcuchaca in Anta Province told a similar story.

"I used to be a storekeeper,” she said, using the past tense because the disaster has left her with no capital. She would buy corn, wheat, and beans, and store them in her house to sell. But all of that was washed away by the river.

"Even if I had the money, I couldn't set up my business again because I used by house for storage and now I wouldn't know where to store the goods", Gutiérrez added.

‘What are we going to eat?’

While shopkeepers wonder how they will recover their losses, a larger worry for the region may be the harvest. According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, 21,730 hectares of crops, or more than 53,000 acres, have been destroyed and more than 130,000 acres have seen a partial loss of crops, mostly in the Cusco and Puno regions.

"Nearly 100 percent of the crops have been lost,” said Juvenal Durán, mayor of the district of Yucay in the Sacred Valley. "The farmers have lost their crops: the corn and cabbage are rotting. Agricultural insurance only covers 400 soles ($141), and there are people who rent their land, so what are they going to do when the crops fail? Yucay is dependent on agriculture. What are we going to eat? Where are we going to live? How are we going to be able to send our children to school?"

The communities in the upland regions have also been affected.

"In my community the crops are riddled with pests, late blight. What's more, as we farm on slopes, the soil is being washed away,” said Alejandro Huamán from Andahuaylillas. He’s worrying because farming is how his family makes a living.

Helping agriculture recover

The local authorities are aware that the focus must be on how to safeguard the next harvest.

"We've got a plan to ensure the next harvest: seeds, fertilizer, training, river defenses. In addition, we need to rebuild the bridges to improve trade and the irrigation channels,” said Gilberto Gil, a councilor in Urubamba.

At the same time, officials know that they need to think about how to help local communities adapt to unpredictable weather.

"This is going to be permanent due to climate change. We must prepare for rains and droughts. We have to address the immediate problems but also plan for the long term,” said Gil.

"One of our biggest concerns is that these disasters will increase poverty", said Elizabeth Cano, Oxfam’s humanitarian aid coordinator in Peru. "One of the main sectors that has been affected is the small-scale farming sector. Unlike the tourism sector, many small-scale farmers live in poverty, so it takes them longer to recover. We are appealing to the central government to increase support measures for this sector."

With some champions in Congress and support from the White House, we're hoping to see domestic legislation that not only fines companies who pollute, but also uses some of these funds to help affected communities build their resilience. If we are successful domestically, we can lay the groundwork for a global deal at the UN Climate Change Conference this December—an agreement that will create a more hospitable climate for us all.

Also in this issue: A force of peace in Peru; Rebuilding in Bangladesh; Oxfam America's new role in Darfur.

"We get water from this ditch, which is a very dirty and murky channel, where garbage is dumped and even dead animals have been found," says Huarcaya, who lives in the town of Huaya Chica. But now, with the help of Oxfam, many families in Huarcaya's town have clean water to drink—thanks to the distribution of water filters and the training in how to use them. So far, the organization has provided 870 water filters in the districts of Humay and Independencia. The goal is to improve significantly the quality of the local drinking water, which often comes from unsafe sources.

Not only did the quake obstruct canals and collapse water treatment and distribution facilities, it also revealed how poor the water quality was in some areas of the countryside. Before the quake, many families had to buy water from tanker trucks or draw it from wells and irrigation ditches. In all these cases the water was unhealthy. The earthquake worsened this situation by increasing the risk of disease.

With the filters Oxfam has been distributing, people are able to remove impurities and sediments. Water that was initially murky, contaminated, and unfit for human consumption becomes clean and free from harmful micro-organisms.

"We get home tired after doing agricultural work (cotton cultivation) and now we have clean water without having to boil it first," observes Delia Mendoza Suárez, a 50-year-old mother of seven children in the village of Palto. Paltoand six other villages now have clean water for drinking and cooking.

Oxfam has been distributing water from tanker trucks in districts where the population does not have sources from which to draw water. The agency is working in coordination with other institutions, such as United Firemen Without Borders (Spain), Pompiers Sans Frontières (France), and Action Against Hunger (Spain). Oxfam has successfully put into service three water treatment plants and has installed 45 water distribution points, including tanks (of 600 and 1,100 liters) and water storage bladders (of 1,500, 3,500, and 6,000 liters), making available an average of 20 liters of water per person per day in each village within the districts of Humay and Independencia.

Health education

"Children and adults get stomach illnesses because the water is not clean. After the earthquake, the situation had worsened since there was no water. Now we have it again but it continues to be dirty," said Amalia Valdiviezo Meza, whose family now drinks filtered water.

To help address the ongoing problems, Oxfam is also coordinating a public health campaign through the local press. It's helping to spread information on the proper use of water, latrines, and hygiene to avoid the spread of disease.

"A month after the earthquake, the health risks keep increasing and we must not lower our guard. On the contrary, we will double our efforts to promote hygiene and good health," says Mónica Ramos, Oxfam's public health promoter in Pisco.

As part of that effort, Oxfam has distributed 1,650 hygiene kits, which include soap, shampoo, brushes, and towels, among other items. To achieve a more complete response, latrines and accompanying sinks for washing are also being installed.

Helping Oxfam to achieve its goals have been members of "Jovos," or Young Volunteers for Disaster Prevention, who came from Moquegua, in southern Peru. Assistance has also come from members of the "Grufides" group who have been helping with the installation of tents and temporary shelters as well as with the promotion of public health through talks on hygiene and the proper use and maintenance of water filters.

Maribel Sanchez is the communications officer for Oxfam International in Pisco, Peru.

At 39, he’s content there—even if he doesn’t have enough money to build his animals a shed to protect them from the cold and snow. That will come in due time, he says. For now, he’s focused on another project that has helped to make his life in these remote mountains a little more secure: the field of barley growing on a steep slope near his hut.

That barley, soon to be harvested and carefully stored in a giant pit not far from the field, represents a lifeline for the 100 head of alpaca from which Gonzalez and his family make their living. The nutrient-rich grass will help tide his herd over should severe cold and snow damage their pasturelands again, as it did—with devastating consequences—in the winter of 2004.

With the help of Oxfam America and its local partner, Asociación Proyección, herders in this rugged region of southern Peru have learned how to seed and harvest small plots of barley and oats at an altitude some people thought was just too high to yield a productive crop. They were wrong.

“Two-and-a-half years ago we came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” said Arturo Rivera Vigil, the field coordinator for Proyección. Today, small patches of deep green barley and oats dot the mountain plains, a buffer against future disasters.

“It has changed all of their lives,” said a translator, speaking for Gonzalez.

“The most important thing now is they can harvest and save the grasses for when the wind and snow hit,” said Simon Quispe Chipa, the mayor of nearby Caylloma, who has been supportive of the program. “Before the project, they couldn’t do anything to save the grasses.”

With the help of the two agencies, villagers planted a total of 110 hectares—about 272 acres—with barley. Family plots are more than half an acre in size—large enough to produce sufficient fodder to help sustain their animals through the roughest weather between May and September. The yield was about 23 tons per family. And since the first successful season, the families and the wider Caylloma community have been buying the seeds themselves, without the assistance of the two agencies.

The mayor has stepped in to help. Shoving open the door to a storage room in the Caylloma town hall—about a three-hour drive from Chiosiri—he showed off a huge stack of sacks. They bulged with barley seeds, filling the air with a sweet, earthy smell. The local government has been buying the seeds in bulk at a low price and selling them at cost to community members.

But it’s not just the barley that is helping to keep the region’s alpaca herds strong. Oxfam and Proyección have also been working with the community on restoring and expanding 272 acres of swampy natural pastures on which the livestock grazes.

By digging a series of narrow channels at a slight slope, villagers have fed water down into the pastures, allowing them to thrive and expand--with the help of clover they also planted.

Speaking through an interpretor, the mayor, Quispe, emphasized the importance of these simple, but vital projects.

“He knew how important it was to have shelter and improve the planting and seeding,” said the interpretor. “He knew that people living here didn’t have a chance to get a better quality of life, and felt strongly the people should improve their lives where they live.”

In a place where there is no electricity to run a pump, where llamas instead of trucks transport many of the goods, and where most people rely on a local spiky grass for their cooking fuel, gravity is the free and super-abundant energy source that is now powering Simon Ccalachua's sprinkler. And beneath the arc of water it sprays, a new growth of hardy rye grass is now sprouting—the guarantee that Ccalachua's alpacas will have the nourishment they need.

Here in Jachaña, a small hamlet in the district of Caylloma, Oxfam America and its local partner, Asociación Proyección, have launched a pilot project aimed at helping poor herders find ways to improve their resources so they can better withstand the hardships of mountain living—the cold, the snow, the remoteness. The sprinkler systems—there are now three scattered around the district—are part of a larger program that has helped 355 families in the area with everything from veterinary services to the production of high-altitude barley for their animals. The effort is part of Oxfam America's strategy to help Andean communities adapt to climate change, some signs of which are already apparent.

"They used to rely on nature and now they know how to work on channels and sprinkling," said a translator, summarizing the benefits for Ccalachua. "Before this project, the mortality of the animals (was very high). Now the mortality is 3 to 10 percent".

Using the resources at hand—a mountain spring and the pull of gravity—the agencies worked with Ccalachu to irrigate about two-and-a-half acres of his sloped, rocky land. Well-watered and well-fertilized (naturally, with alpaca droppings), a pasture that size is big enough to keep 20 alpacas happily nourished, said Arturo Rivera Vigil, the field coordinator for Proyección. The trick is to fence off portions of the pasture after the animals have grazed, allowing the grasses to recover. By the time the herd completes a full rotation, the grass where they started will be ready to eat again.

The system has a number of benefits, said Rivera. The robust diet the animals get encourages them to produce more wool. Instead of one or two pounds of wool, each alpaca can produce between two and four pounds—which in turn means more income for herding families. Keeping watch over the animals in a fenced pasture is a great deal easier for a herder than following them high and low as they roam freely looking for natural grasses, added Rivera. And the mechanism is easy fairly easy to construct: A small reservoir above the field, lined with plastic, is connected it to a pipe running down the hill. With the twist of a valve, the reservoir opens and the water gushes down through a pipe, shooting through slow-spinning sprinklers set in a line across the field.

The only stumbling block is cost. The price tag on each of these sprinkler systems is $1,625, and that doesn't include the cost of the machinery used to help dig the small reservoir.

"That's why (Caylloma) City Hall has to get involved," said Angel Chavez, an Oxfam America humanitarian officer who has worked on the project. Using tax dollars, local government needs to help support these kinds of projects, he added.

That's what the people of Jachaña want too—more sprinklers like the one Ccalachua has. A few pipes hooked to a few small reservoirs could go a long way toward improving the resilience of these mountain families. And though life at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level can be hard, there is no other place some herders can imagine living.

"There is no pollution. The water is nicer. And we have open fields," said Timoteo Ccalahua Quispe.

This activity is part of Oxfam America's adaptation strategy on climate change in Andean communities where already there are some signals of the climate change effects.

It’s the kind of place Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, are working in now—at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level in air so thin that newcomers lose their breath and no other aid agencies have the fortitude to venture.

The place is the district of Caylloma, and the people who live here are alpaca herders. Oxfam’s mission is to make sure that when trouble does come—as it has in the past and surely will again because of the changing weather patterns families in these Andean hamlets are already grappling with—they will be prepared to cope.

Three years ago, after a severe cold snap wiped out tens of thousands of llamas and alpacas across Peru’s southern highlands, Oxfam and Proyección joined forces to find a way to prevent a repeat of the suffering people experienced then. Their proposal—a form of disaster risk reduction—included a range of self-help ideas, a smattering of technology, and the most important tool of all: planning.

Today, acres of barley now grow on the slopes—a buffer against food shortages for livestock. New adobe sheds with metal roofs stand in some of the coldest mountain pockets, offering critical shelter for alpacas that had none before. Gravity-fed sprinklers irrigate enclosed pastures of rye grass, guaranteeing a steady source of nourishment for animals. And a handful of radio towers dot the district, connecting far-flung hamlets with the world at large.

Simon Ccalachua, who lives in the little village of Jachaña, put it this way. Without this project, nothing would have changed for him and his family. They had no choice but to accept what nature brought, good or bad. If the cold came, their animals died. But now, armed with new ways of growing the grasses their alpacas need and a way to shelter them, families like Ccalachua’s can overcome the troubles nature brings—on their own.

Hard lessons

For Arturo Rivera Vigil, a field coordinator for Proyección, the importance of equipping people with tools to solve their own problems was a lesson he learned the hard way, and one he vowed to share with Caylloma.

Working in another region of Peru during a different emergency, Proyección decided that the best approach would be to provide direct aid to the families in need. So the agency purchased vast quantities of dried alfalfa to help feed the livestock on which those families depended. But that commodity was in short supply because of the emergency, and instantly, its price nearly tripled. Nevertheless, Proyección moved ahead with its plan, delivering tons of alfalfa to the troubled communities. But when the supplies arrived, Proyección learned there was no place in which to store it all.

“We realized we weren’t teaching anything to the communities,” Rivera said. When the cold snap paralyzed Caylloma, Proyección and Oxfam decided to take a longer-term approach—and find sustainable solutions to the problems rather than offer a temporary fix.

But that decision required a new way of looking at the situation: Could there possibly be things communities could do to prepare for disasters at such high altitudes?

“The typical thinking was people living up so high were so remote and had their own culture and own system of raising animals,” said Rivera. “No one thought they could help them, and no one thought anything could grow up that high.”

Proyección and Oxfam proved them wrong.

“We came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” Rivera told a crowd during a recent ceremony at the Caylloma town hall honoring the project’s high-altitude accomplishments for 355 families. “Three years later, here we are.”

Far away and poor

Oxfam and Proyección have helped Caylloma take solid first steps towards addressing a problem that is all too familiar to poor people living in precarious places around the world: When something goes wrong in their environment, they suffer the most.

Cataclysmic events—deep freezes, drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—only turn into disasters when people get caught in them and have few means for managing the consequences. That has been the case in the Caylloma district.

From the hamlet of Chinosiri, for instance, it’s an all-day walk down to the town of Caylloma for help. When the storm hit, assistance didn’t arrive for a week. In sturdy, four-wheel trucks, it’s a three-hour drive from Caylloma to Chinosiri along a rutted track that snakes in hairpin turns up the sides of ridges and back down through streams.

Even at the end of the summer the weather at this height is harsh. Thunder rolls over the mountain plains as hail ricochets off the stony ground. At higher elevations, snow blankets the thin pastures.

Far from one another stand tiny dwellings, made of stone or adobe with thatched roofs. Inside, small fires burn. There is not a tree or bush in sight for fuel, so families make do with dung and Ichu, a spiky grass that livestock will only eat when it’s young and tender.

Widespread poverty across the region means that beyond elementary school, there are few opportunities for learning. Students determined enough to attend one of only two high schools in the province wrestle with a good deal of hardship in pursuit of that dream. The son of Jose Gonzalez Condo, now in his second year of high school, walks four hours to get there in the morning, and another four to return home at the end of the day.

For Gonzalez, the effort his son is making is worth every step: An education will give the boy the tools he needs to live a better life—not necessarily far away in a city, but right here in Chinosiri, perhaps.

Uncertainty ahead

With the uncertainty that lies ahead for herding families in Caylloma, education is an important asset and it has been a component of Oxfam’s and Proyección’s disaster risk reduction program. For example, the agencies have produced a series of colorful guides on storm alert systems, the construction of livestock sheds, and improving the use of water resources.

Lately, families have begun to worry about shifting patterns of rain that are affecting the growth rate of the grasses on which their animals feed. The rains are supposed to fall in November, but for the past two or three years, they haven’t come until January, stunting the progress of the grasses. That in turn prevents them from dropping their seeds to start a new round of growth before the May ice season arrives.

Having the means to cope with the consequences of those changes—stores of barley, irrigated pastures—will go a long way toward easing the hardships people would otherwise face. And that explains the enthusiasm with which the mayor of Caylloma has embraced this disaster risk reduction project.

“A project like this can be applied to the whole province,” said Simón Quispe Chipa, the mayor. “This project has been a real motivation for the whole town.”

"Caylloma. Caylloma. Caylloma," he says into the mic, and over the airwaves, not slowed for a moment by mud or steep ridges or gushing streams, comes the scratchy answer—accompanied by a big mayoral smile.

This is Chinosiri's new radio, one of four Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, have installed in remote mountain hamlets around Caylloma following a devastating cold snap and heavy snow three years ago. The storm lasted five days, dumping nearly three feet of snow in the highlands, paralyzing families of alpaca herders who make their living there, and killing the grasses on which their precious animals feed. In some of the remotest communities, help didn't arrive for 10 days.

Now, for the 70 families living close to 16,000 feet above sea level in Chinosiri, calls for emergency aid can be broadcast instantly. And on the receiving end, storm alerts, picked up via the new radio, may soon give residents of the hamlet and their far-flung neighbors a chance to get ready.

"We can keep communications with authorities both ways," says Jaime Condori Inca, Chinosiri's 27-year-old radio operator whose job it is to establish contact twice a day—at 7 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.—with the world far below his hamlet.

Early warning system

The radio network is part of an early warning system that is helping 355 families scattered throughout the Caylloma district prepare for future emergencies.

Training has included the compilation of a list of natural signs—much like a farmer's almanac—that could indicate a pending change in weather. What can you expect when the sky is pink in the afternoon? Frost. If you should hear a sheep bleating at night, snow is surely on its way. And about that black lizard: its color announces plentiful rain. But if the lizard is white, the rain may be in short supply.

Gleaned from generations of herders' experiences with the harsh conditions in the Andes, the list now appears in a colorful training guide published by Oxfam and Proyección and distributed widely among Caylloma residents. But as weather patterns begin to shift—during the last three years, for instance, November rains didn't come until January—mountain families need new ways of understanding their environment. And that's where the radio comes in.

With it, Condori can send details about daily changes in the local weather to a national repository that collects meteorological data as part of a long-term tracking initiative. Caylloma is working with the Meteorologist National Services and the ministry of Agriculture on the project. Environmental details are gathered with the help of a small weather station—a sturdy white box with a thermometer mounted inside—that stands just behind the radio hut. It's checked daily and the temperature, along with noticeable precipitation, is carefully recorded on a chart next to the radio.

Across the highland plains, in the hamlet of Jachaña, sits a second radio, which in turn connects with another in Chinosiri and with a fourth one in the Caylloma town hall. It's here that Proyección has a small emergency operations center equipped with a computer, a printer, first-aid supplies, and a list of all the relevant radio frequencies.

Small though the radio network may be, it represents a major step forward for Caylloma—and is testament to the commitment of the entire district. Families arranged, for instance, to carry parts of the Chinosiri weather station up the mountainsides on the backs of llamas.

"The people from every community got involved," said Danny Gibbons, Oxfam America's communications officer in Lima. "They shared the burden."

Additionally, the radio network has helped people communicate about other emergencies such as health crises and alpaca rustling as well as improved coordination among different levels of government.

We were there, together with Angel Chavez, one of Oxfam America’s humanitarian officers, to gather stories about Oxfam’s work with alpaca herders. They had suffered serious losses in 2004 when a severe winter storm killed many of the wooly creatures that are the backbone of the local economy. So vital are these camel cousins to the well-being of the families scattered across the mountains that many of the shelters they have built for the animals are superior to their own mud-brick and stone homes.

The income from alpaca wool—softer than cashmere when it’s cleaned, spun, and woven—feeds and clothes families, buys them medicine, and helps cover the occasional extraordinary expense. Without the few hundred dollars herders earn each year from the sale of the wool, life in these barren, thin-aired mountains would not be possible for them. And for many, it’s the only life they have ever known, helping to account for Peru’s position as the world’s top producer—by far—of alpaca wool.

About 80 percent of the wool now on the market comes from this South American country; Bolivia produces another 15 percent; and the rest comes from a smattering of countries including Australia, Switzerland, and England. So you would think, given Peru’s dominance in the industry, that the work of these Caylloma herders would guarantee their families a measure of security. Not so.

There, at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level, nothing is certain: The cold kills, and changing weather patterns are robbing the region of the rain it needs for mountain pastures to grow. Life is hard, and people are very poor.

Sky high—and breathless

Oxfam’s work with Proyección has been to help Caylloma herders find ways to buffer themselves against future disasters by improving pastureland; planting barley to serve as an emergency reserve for their animals; and developing an early alert system, including the installation of a simple radio network—all at an altitude that has scared off just about every other aid group.

“Nobody has worked at this height,” said Rivera. “No one wants to come up here. Only us.”

There’s a reason: To reach Caylloma’s remote communities requires a degree of energy that would exhaust a lesser field coordinator and his team. But for Rivera, that challenge—and the need that is so evident among the families of this rugged terrain—is the inspiration that repeatedly draws him up the steep slopes to Chinosiri, Jachaña, and a handful of other hamlets.

From Arequipa, a city in southern Peru where Proyección has its offices, the drive in a pair of heavy-duty pickup trucks to the town of Caylloma took us about seven hours through rain, hail, and snow on a rutted mountain road—and that was just the first half of the journey. Following a night’s rest, we left at 6 a.m. for the three-hour climb to Chinosiri, the belly of our truck scraping the ruts as we inched around hairpin turns and splashed through streams carving gullies in the dirt track.

The snow was falling in fat, wet flakes, blanketing the mountains in white, when Rivera, in the truck ahead, pulled over and jumped out, signaling that this—of all high and remote spots—was just the place for a group picture.

“Beautiful!” he said, surveying the vast emptiness around us: no trees, no bushes, no dwellings—only mountains and more mountains with sharp rocks underfoot.

It wasn’t until I scrambled up the slippery bank to where Rivera and Chavez were already standing in the snow that I realized just how hard the work in Caylloma could be: Without the sea-level amounts of oxygen I was used to, a few quick steps at 15,748 feet high left me breathless and exhausted. Puffing hard, I slipped back down the embankment and into the truck, grateful to be sitting once again, and marveling at the stamina of my colleagues. Could I do this, like them, on a regular basis? Could anybody?

Rivera had already answered that question: No.

Mountain home

The air at the end of this Andean summer was cold and damp, and all of us in the pair of trucks were bundled in just about every stitch of clothing we had brought. I had on two shirts, a sweater, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket, a down vest, a windbreaker, thick wool socks, and a wool cap—just enough to keep the chill at bay.

So I was surprised to see, beyond the steamed windows of the warm truck, two boys hiking hard and fast through the mud on a slope of pasture: They had only sandals on their feet—no shoes, no socks to keep the cold away. They’re boys, I thought, and that’s what boys do: tough things.

But as we bounced along, there were others—men, women, children—all wearing sandals in the frigid air. And as the clouds swept across the sky, occasionally unleashing a shower of cold rain, some of the mountain dwellers hardly seemed to notice, and simply wrapped themselves tight in their woolen blankets and ponchos.

Jose Gonzalez Condo, who has lived all of his 39 years in the tiny community of Chinosiri, explained that he and his fellow villagers are used to the mountain weather and its variable conditions. Chinosiri is home, he said, and he likes it.

But as weather patterns have begun to change—the rains are coming late, which in turn delays the growth of pasture grasses and threatens the health of herds—raising alpacas at this altitude has become increasingly difficult, said Gonzalez. And in the recent past, there was no way to get the word out about challenging weather conditions—be they drought or cold waves—unless someone made the 30-mile trek down to Caylloma to ask for help. The only way to get there is on foot, and the walk takes a day.

Chinosiri’s new two-way radio, installed by Proyección in February, has connected this remotest of villages to the outside world. And with that connection has come the sliver of hope that a way of life for the 70 families there—and for more than 3,400 rural residents scattered across the Caylloma district—is now more secure.

For that reason Oxfam America's duty is clear: We and our project partners must help reform government policies, laws, and social injustices that deny people the right to live a decent life. We do this by providing funding, training, and the moral support people need to make real, substantive and transformative changes. The courageous and visionary people who do this work are setting out to build a movement for social justice—and Oxfam America is one of the few organizations to which they can turn for the help they need.

Climate change has huge implications for security and terrorism, for diplomatic distortions, for the viability of the global economy—and ultimately for equity. It also contains enormous opportunities for developing countries. In this issue of Exchange, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ross Gelbspan writes about the impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable people.

Also in this issue, Oxfam America's Fast for a World Harvest turns 30; we revisit communities in Central America devastated by Hurricane Mitch five years ago; and shed light on the struggles of Peru's indigenous Quechua people.

Amid cheers from a throng of enthusiastic supporters and international media, Make Trade Fair won the day.

Oxfam's trade campaign was launched.

Within hours of the Hong Kong debut, events were held in 25 cities including Brussels, Dublin, Geneva, Mexico City, San Salvador, and Washington, D.C. These events ranged from press conferences and symposiums to a rock concert in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Oxfam's trade campaign seeks to unite concerned citizens around the world in calling for fair trade policies that will help move millions of people out of poverty.

Nobel Prize Professor Amartya Sen, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and musician and social activist Bono were among those who endorsed the campaign. "Oxfam has got it right," said Bono. "It wouldn't cost much to change the rules of trade so that poor countries can work their way out of poverty. But the world's leaders won't act unless they hear enough people telling them."

Also in this issue of EXCHANGE, writers Frances and Anna Lappé discuss their book Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, and we bring you updates on Oxfam's work with water and sanitation, drought in Ethiopia, and indigenous women in the highlands of Peru who are speaking out after decades of violence.