Last week I saw a brief feature on local TV about a Canadian couple who had mortgaged their home to create an international development organization in Peru, starting with shipping a container full of donated medical supplies to a small town on the Peruvian coast. I didn't catch the person's name, but I did catch the website: www.paraelmundo.org. Once on the site I sent an email, and Josh, the co-founder of this organization, got back to me in an email from Peru to arrange an interview with his wife, Danielle, who had came up with the idea for this project.

Josh and Danielle remortgaged their home to raise $30,000 to start a non-profit community development organization in a town called Mancora, a small fishing town of 15,000 people, located in northern Peru on the Pacific coast, just south of the Ecuadorian border.

They already started with organizing a shipment of medical supplies and also want to find a doctor who would be interested in volunteering his or her time and expertise to the community. Women's health and men's problems with alcoholism are among the top problems that the population in Mancora faces. Danielle and Josh also plan to work with the men and women in this town to address unemployment and social issues. Later on they also plan to obtain funding for a solar-powered drinking water system that will supply the town's population with drinking water, a precious resource in this drought-stricken community. They have a long-term plan in mind to help this community and make it self-sufficient.

Once one of Peru's most important fishing communities, Mancora has faced economic hardship in the last 15 years associated with the collapse of the fish stocks, in part due to over-fishing, especially by foreign-owned mega-trawlers, as well as a devastating El Ni