Simon Ogilvie-Harris from Chavin Jewellery shares his experiences of Peru

The goal was to give them an insight and help on how to break into the UK jewellery market.

I was thrilled to be working with these Peruvian agencies and artisanal Peruvian businesses because Chavin Jewellery believes in engraining ethical practises into the core of our business and to do this we must give back to the local communities where our jewellery is crafted.

The Chavin brand sits at the convergence of luxury and responsibility - a belief that luxury need not only be material gratification. Through the empowerment of people and societies we believe ethical gratification can be achieved. Our goal is to achieve this by working with these Peruvian agencies and through our innovative partnership with SOS Children, the world’s largest orphans and abandoned children’s charity.

My trip to Peru gave me the opportunity to visit the SOS Children Luz Y Vida family strengthening programme, which Chavin Jewellery is supporting. The Luz Y Vida project is in the northern district of Lima, Carabayllo. This area of Lima has grown rapidly due to migrants arriving from the poorer mountain regions surrounding Lima in search of a better quality of life. Central Lima is very modern and you can see it is an up and coming place, but as you leave the centre and reach the outskirts of the city it has a very different feel. It is rough and hilly terrain with very primitive architecture and housing.

The Luz Y Vida family strengthening programme has two key purposes: firstly, a child-minding programme where mothers who are working can leave their children to be educated while they go to work. One major problem in Peru is that families will leave young children at home while they are working, which puts the children at risk.

The second is to help families improve their economic situations and provide methods of working with situations such as domestic violence and basic health education.

Luz Y Vida is a building with a classroom for children, a main function room and a kitchen, which has recently been built so that the children in the project can be given a healthy nutritional diet. At Luz Y Vida, SOS Children has partnered with local authorities and communities to get additional support with the view of it becoming self-sustaining. After this community has been empowered, SOS Children will leave the project it established to the community and start a new one in another area of Lima with a greater need. By doing this they are making a real difference on the ground in Peru.

As you may already know, Chavin Jewellery is committed to donating a percentage of company sales to Luz Y Vida and work alongside SOS Children to help develop the jewellery making classes through skills transfer programmes. We will be working with SOS Children and contributing to business skills and jewellery making classes. I will be travelling to Peru for four days a year to work with these projects. The goal is for us to work together and train the mothers so they have the ability to run their own business.

To get this started our initial contribution will go towards buying more jewellery supplies (plastic pearls and metal filaments) for the mothers. As we grow through the support of our customers we will be giving larger sums of money to the project. This additional financial support will be critical to further enhancing these courses and our partnership with SOS Children.

My trip to Peru was very successful and inspiring. I am extremely excited about developing this innovative partnership with SOS Children which can set the foundations for Peruvian people to empower themselves and improve their quality of life in the long term rather than just a short fix of aid.

To find out more about SOS Children’s work in Peru, click here