To Iquitos with love: the Fourth Annual Gesundheit Iquitos Clown Service Experience, July 31-Aug 13, 2008!

The Belén district at the edge of Iquitos, Peru near the headwaters of the Amazon River, is one of Latin America's most impoverished communities. From lack of sanitation and clean water to unemployment and hunger, the community of 15,000 struggles from neglect and exploitation. Gesundheit has been organizing annual clown trips to Iquitos for the past three years to show some love, bringing medical supplies, helping Belén residents initiate programs they can use to address their concerns, lending hands and brushes and paint to give nearly 200 homes a brighter outlook.

Gesundheit wants to continue the friendship with this community and invites you to join in! Along with the Peruvian group Bolaroja and Airline Ambassadors, we plan to clown in hospitals, in special needs facilities, hospices, nursing homes, and schools, while painting another hundred homes. It is our hope also to build or renovate a structure as a community center. We will be working very closely with Belén residents during our two weeks. We also will be giving workshops to children, teenagers, and others in health promotion, team building, and the arts.

Fluency in Spanish is helpful but not necessary, and nor do you need a background clowning. Just bring your willingness to mix fun, attentiveness and elbow grease in the joy of service. The cost of the trip, $1550, does not include travel to and from Lima. Part of the proceeds will go toward scholarships and assisting women's entrepreneurship in Belén.

It will be an unforgettable experience - to get in the mood of public joy, we request that you travel to Lima already in costume.

For more information, email Gesundheit Board member Dr. John Glick at jawkneemail@comcast.net.