Los Amigos is a faith-based organization dedicated to supporting programs that improve and transform the lives of the poor of Chimbote, Peru.

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Visit Chimbote

About the City of Chimbote

Formerly a thriving resort town and lucrative fishing port, Chimbote was once the most important fishing port in Peru. Known in the 1950s as the “Honeymoon Capital of Peru,” Chimbote has been ravaged by decades of economic calamities and dramatic population surges, creating desperate conditions for the city’s residents. Today, the city includes a modern center, with paved streets, shops, and a few restaurants and hotels, surrounded by tens of thousands of windowless, woven-reed shacks built in the sand by impoverished residents who have nowhere else to live.

Chimbote today is one of Peru’s poorest and most contaminated cities, with outdated fishmeal factories pumping toxins into the air, soil and water.

Today, the overburdened city holds more than 400,000 residents, many of whom live on land on the outskirts of town that is not their own. They struggle  through abject poverty and lack access to even the most basic necessities, such as sewer, water or electricity.

With employment that rises and falls on the fortunes of the city’s beleaguered fishmeal factories, jobs are exceptionally scarce. In areas where Los Amigos operates, the unemployment or underemployment rate is believed to be as high as 87 percent.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reports that at least 45 percent of Chimbote’s residents live in conditions of extreme poverty– lacking the money to buy a simple basket of food. According to the international aid organization CARE, the average Chimbotano earns only around $300 each year – putting most of the population at the extreme poverty level, unable to satisfy basic human needs.

Chimbote’s poor have become so accustomed to disease and death that preventive medicine is virtually unknown. Simple daily survival so preoccupies parents that they unintentionally neglect basic health-care practices for infant sons and daughters. The Worldwatch Institute reports that life expectancy in Chimbote is 10 years lower than Peru’s national average. 

Despite the city’s harsh circumstances, Chimbote’s story remains one of hope, courage and transformation. The optimism and determination of Chimbote’s people stand in stark contrast to the dire conditions in which they live.

Against exceptionally challenging odds, we are making a difference. Working with local residents, the Los Amigos is helping Chimbotanos defy their circumstances and find new ways to succeed.