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Regular visitors (read: my mom) might remember that I took my son to Peru last summer. What follows is a vignette from our visit to some impoverished villages in the high Andes. I wrote it as part of a donation drive for Comunidad, a non-profit whose board I sit on.

At first glance, you could be in any classroom anywhere. The kindergartners are restless. Some have loud sniffles. A few of them crack jokes and laugh until the teacher asks everyone to quiet down and recite their vocabulary words.

Only the vocabulary words are in Quechua. The And outside the one-room schoolhouse, hovering in the doorway, actually, are all the parents. Mothers and fathers are beaming with imperfect smiles as they peer through the doorway, waiting expectantly to see if the kids need anything—a notebook, a pencil, perhaps a reminder to behave.

Even though we’re in the tiny Peruvian village of Hatumpampa, I immediately recognize what these parents are doing. They’re doting! It’s what my wife and I do with our kids back home in Minnesota. Now, I don’t speak a stitch of Quechua, nor raise llamas at 12,000 feet, but wanting to see your children succeed — that I can relate to.

I’ve come with my 10-year-old son Sam to Peru to see what life is like in the remote villages where Comunidad has been working. Places with names like Paccha, Culluhuanca and Corazón de Ñaupas. Places that are barely on the map, and after decades of neglect and civil war, just starting to claw their way back to normalcy.

After a day-long tour of the kindergarten classes at each of the villages, meeting teachers and parents and their adorable children (and eating the filling, multi-course meals that are proudly served to us at each stop) we settle in for a weekend in Corazón de Ñaupas.

“Corazón” is a cozy little town. Except for the three public buildings erected by the government and the oddly-angled soccer field that was literally quarried out of the hillside, it’s a collection of a two-dozen adobe farmhouses.

Hovering over the town on one of the hills are several rock outcrops whose eroded cylindrical shapes loosely resemble human figures. Someone suggests that the rocks gave the town its name, which means “Heart of the Ancestors.”

These “ancestors” have indeed helped keep the town safe over the years. During the civil war of the 1980s and 90s, villagers camped out in the hills above the rocks to avoid nighttime raids by guerrillas.

Today, this part of Peru is peaceful. The hills above Corazón aren’t for hiding, but for sunbathing and napping, as we discover on a lazy Saturday. From the hilltop, we can see the Paccha Valley spread out below us and eagles drifting on air currents above. Occasionally, the braying of a donkey or the bells of a llama caravan drift upward from who knows where.

Back in town, the soccer field is no longer a place for rounding up frightened villagers. It’s for soccer, volleyball and recreation. Over the course of our stay, we enjoy several heated volleyball matches that pull in seemingly everyone from the village as either player or spectator. To our surprise, the grade-school teacher is one of the most feared opponents. Her withering serve usually causes one of us to flail about and fall to the ground in a spectacular but failed defense.

And those government buildings are for schooling. As we learn during our stay, many of the parents of school-aged kids missed out on their chance at education. They grew up during the war, a time in which survival was a higher priority than arithmetic.

That might explain the high attendance in Corazón’s first-ever kindergarten class, which Comunidad has funded. Or the high participation in the breakfast program for kids all ages, which Comunidad also supports. These parents are hungry to see their children do better. It’s like they’ve been given a second chance. And they’re holding on for dear life.

On our last night, we’re asked to sit as guests of honor at a town hall meeting in the school building. The classroom is crowded. Many of the adults are squeezed into children’s desk-chairs. Others stand in back. Yet more adults—many of the same parents who sit outside this classroom every morning while their six-year-olds attend kindergarten—wait expectantly outside the door.

We listen to several speeches, some in Spanish, some in Quechua—nearly all of them emotional and teary-eyed. The speakers describe what the people of Corazón have been through these past years. “Many people have promised many things over the years,” the president of the community says. But with Comunidad it’s been different. As promised, Nancy Maldonado Cárdova, Comunidad’s kindergarten teacher arrives every Monday and stays all week to teach class. And when the kids of Corazón arrive in the morning (some of whom have walked two hours to school on an empty stomach), there is hot breakfast waiting. Most importantly, the kids have begun to show progress in school. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of them can now read better than their parents.

All this, he says, is just the beginning of a long and slow journey. But in this forgotten corner of the world, it’s what passes for hope.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider making a small donation to Comunidad.