I’ve got a dilemma

I’ve got a dilemma, or at least it feels like one to me. The intent of this blog is to record my experiences in Peru, and secondly to provide some insight to daily life in Chiclayo to family, friends and others who may be interested. Since the formation of Promesa Peru – a charitable organization Maribel and I are members of, I’ve been devoting a lot of entries to that activity. The truth is I really don’t want to do that…not on this blog. I’d prefer to write about visits to small towns, or archeology sites, or interesting people or situations, or some facet of everyday life.

What I’m struggling with is this…I believe strongly in the work Promesa Peru has done and is doing and there are still many situations where we could be helping people to help themselves, but not enough people know we exist. Getting donations is all about numbers of readers and until enough people find the Promesa Peru web page the only means we have to reach them is this blog. Now, I’m not interested in having the world’s most read blog and if people lose interest in what I have to say that's okay, but I don’t want readers to leave because every other entry is asking for money.

We’ve recently tried another approach to reach potential donors. We sent emails to fifty Peruvian restaurants across the United States and Canada, asking them to make our brochures available to their customers, and in return offering to list their restaurant on this Promesa Peru web page:

https://sites.google.com/site/promesaperuchiclayo/home/hungry

As of this writing we’ve received eight replies. We know there are hundreds of Peruvian restaurants in the United States alone, but even those with web pages often do not have an email address so are difficult to reach. If you clicked on the page address you may have noticed there is only one participating restaurant in New Jersey, and none in Los Angeles or Miami where thousands of expatriate Peruvians live who might help us if they knew we were here.

So instead of asking you for a donation, can I ask this of you? Do you have a favorite Peruvian restaurant nearby? Would you be willing to ask them if they would display our brochures in exchange for free advertising? After they’ve said yes, and I can’t imagine why any restaurant would not want to do that, send an email to me at promesaperu2@gmail.com with the restaurant’s address and contact name and we’ll have brochures in the mail within two business days.

Please think about it - if we can reach thousands of people through a restaurant network I won’t have to use this blog to ask for donations, which will solve my dilemma, and you won’t have to experience that, "geeeze…he’s asking for money again!” feeling. Sounds fair to me.

Tom