The Pucusana Project
Our Story
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Where it Began
In 2004, Albert Wallace applied for a grant with the United Nations. Weeks later, he received an email from a fellow applicant, named Elena, asking if he had heard anything. Curious what she was applying for, Al struck up a conversation. Elena was applying for money for her school, Pierre Laplace, to create a campaign to save the Humboldt Penguins that lived on the island outside her fishing village. Feeling compelled to help, Al sent her the money she needed, and a friendship was created... and yes, they did save the penguins.
The following year, Elena needed new sports equipment, so Al sent a few boxes along with his 15 year old son, Topher. In the years to follow, Al and his children would travel to Pucusana multiple times, taking school supplies, medical teams, and High School short-term mission trips. It was on one of those STM trips that Allison, Topher’s high school girlfriend, visited Pucusana for the first time, at 17 years old. And just like Topher, Pucusana fell into a special place in her heart.
In 2010, Topher moved to Pucusana full-time, teaching English at Pierre Laplace and attending Art school in Lima. He spent 2 and a half years in Peru and became fluent in Spanish. Around that same time, Elena found an abandoned property with a 3-story building in one of the outer impoverished neighborhoods of Pucusana. Built 30 years prior, this land was owned by The Brethren Church in Ashland, Ohio. With a few emails, a partnership was formed. For the next 8 years, Elena Prado, Pierre Laplace High School, and the Brethren Church shared this property for educational and poverty alleviation purposes.
In 2013, Topher moved back to the US and married his high school sweetheart, Allison. For the next ten years, they remained in the US, where Allison finished her degrees and Topher pursued a video and motion graphics career. But they stayed very active with the Pucusana ministry, sponsoring children to attend Pierre Laplace High School and visiting Pucusana multiple times.
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Then in 2017, Allison spent four months in Pucusana to renovate, paint, and decorate the inside of the building on the Brethren Church property. It was during this time that she felt the call on her life to further the work Elena was doing in Pucusana in a bigger and more effective way.
Thus began The Pucusana Project as we know it today.
Pierre Laplace
The Pucusana Project officially started in 2018, and for two years, it helped aid Pierre Laplace High School with programs and student sponsorships. They created adult business training classes for single mothers and hosted Christian community outreach events. But in 2019, new government requirements for schools, forced Elena to close down Pierre Laplace.
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For 18 years, Pierre Laplace High School had a 100% graduation rate, with 90% of those graduates attending university. On average, only 2% of graduates make it into university from the public schools. Pierre Laplace put forth students who have become teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, architects, translators and business owners. Pierre Laplace was known for its excellence throughout the community, and it is deeply missed.
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Even though the school closed, we always planned to build a new school on the Brethren Church property and meet all the new requirements from the state. We were working toward this goal while providing community programs when the Covid19 Pandemic hit and changed the world forever.
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The COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for Peru. By May 2020, just two months after extreme lockdown measures, Peru declared that its medical system had collapsed, leaving people to fend for themselves. Completely unequipped with medial personal, PPE, and oxygen equipment, Peru unsuccessfully tried to buy all they needed from other countries. They simply did not have enough of anything to help anyone who was sick. Then, in early 2021, a government mandate was passed stating that ICU beds would only be available for people under the age of 60. If you were over the age of 55 and caught COVID, you had a 9 out of 10 chance of dying. It became a common sight to see dead loved ones wrapped in plastic or cardboard left on the sidewalk for a truck to take them to a mass burial site. Peru had the highest death rate per capita from COVID in the entire world.
In addition to the horrors caused by the illness and extreme lockdown, quarantine measures closed schools for two years and created a massive starvation crisis. Peru is a 3rd world country. 75% of its population lives in poverty. There was no online learning, no online delivery of groceries or goods. Pucusana became a ghost town, and people struggled to survive. To combat the starvation crisis, The Pucusana Project focused on food relief from 2020-2022. Using volunteers, we fed thousands of people, every month, by passing out food baskets. We also helped open 12 Soup Kitchens in the human settlements. When Peru started to open back up in 2022, the Pucusana City Hall and Mayor awarded our nonprofit with a “Certificate of Thanks” for feeding the community and saving lives.
Covid19 Pandemic
After the pandemic was over, Pucusana struggled to get back on its feet. Children were thrown back into school without the proper resources to help them catch up on the two years they had missed. Because so many private schools closed permanently during the pandemic, the public schools are now even more overcrowded than before. The need for us to build a new school was more evident than ever before. Needing more feet on the ground to help accomplish this goal, Topher and Allison Wallace moved to Peru with their two-year-old son in tow. The nonprofit is moving forward with its plans to build and open a private Christian k-12 school. Much like our old school, Pierre Laplace, this new school will be excellent, but even bigger and better. It will be something Pucusana has never had before but desperately needs. Currently, we have many successful educational programs available to help children in the community. Our ministry has also expanded to include an internship program with post-graduate students from the US, and the Wallaces started a home church in 2024. We have high hopes for the growth of these projects and truly believe God has a bright future in store for Pucusana. Partner with us, become a monthly donor, and share in our story by changing lives for generations to come.
The Future is Bright
