Bienvenido
Thanks for visiting the Andino International Blog. Follow our work in South America as the projects get underway. This fall be sure to visit our fundraising exhibition which showcases the photographic and cinematic material which has been captured on location.Blog
Feb. 17, 2010 A Trip to the Zoo
By: Gregg Bell
Today the students at our Bustamonte school took a field trip to the City Zoo of Arequipa. The trip is to mark the end of the summer school program. It was both an eye opening and educational trip for the children, all of whom were visiting the Zoo for the first time.
Feb. 01, 2010 Construction Starts!!
By: Gregg Bell
The ground breaking at the Socabaya School occurred at 9 AM. Over the next four weeks, construction crews from Energy & Steel S.L.R. will be extensively renovating and expanding the school house. Parents of current and future students will also participate in the latter stages of construction by helping to paint and setup the school for the March southern hemisphere school year start. The new facility includes: finished concrete walls and ceiling, tiled ceramic floors, large glass windows, electrical wiring, fluorescent lights, running water and restrooms for both genders, all features which were not available with the original structure.
Oct. 25, 2009 Characato & Cerrito Huacsapata
By: Damien Bell
Gregg met me at my hostel in Arequipa last Sunday and after a quick breakfast (he had been on a bus for 18hours!) we headed to a local market to purchase supplies for a primary school he had visited on his last trip. We purchased all the standard school supplies: pencils, notebooks, markers, coloured paper, scissors and gluesticks and managed to negotiate a reasonable price after explaining the mission of Andino International.
The following day we drove out to the slums of Cerrito Huacsapata, approximately thirty minutes outside of Arequipa in the mountain highlands to deliver the supplies. I was shocked by how quickly the suburbs of Arequipa morphed into a landscape of crudely constructed shanties built into the desolate mountainside. They looked almost unlivable... Our arrival at the school caused a great deal of excitement as children came charging out of class to inspect our taxi. Gregg explained the purpose of our visit to the teacher and we proceeded to hand out our gifts to the kids. As well as the school equipment we unpacked a bag of children´s sneakers generously donated by Sally Davies and the Greenwich Recycling Advisory Board. Each child lined up, patient but clearly excited as we removed their old scrappy footwear and tied the laces on their new shoes.
The school itself was a small building with bare stone walls, a corrugated tin roof held in place by loose rocks, one small window with cracked glass panes and a door. A tattered yellow canvas flapped dejectedly in the wind - the one source of shade in the schoolyard. Inside the dark room fourteen children aged five to eight crammed onto a few small tables. The stone walls were half covered by a green plastic sheet and a couple of educational charts. Another group of older students attend class each afternoon. This school was clearly in need of more than basic supplies.
After several visits to the school and discussions with the teacher and local villagers we obtained the name and address of Roberto Lopez, the director of the school at Cerrito and others in the nearby area. Along with Johnny Flores, Andino International´s Director of Operations, we met Roberto at the office in his school in Huacachina. The school here housed approximately sixty students in a number of classrooms, a much more substantial facility than Cerrito. During our meeting with Roberto, he explained the community planned to move the current school in Cerrito to a new building on nearby land in the coming year. Assisting in construction of this building could well be a project for Andino International in the near future.
Roberto directed our car out to a third school, located in Zone 2, Sector B of Characato which he believed was badly in need of assistance. Inspecting the large building we discovered that space here was not being efficiently utilized, primarily due to the lack of funds necessary for repair. The building itself has the potential to support many more students than at present. The two large rooms seat twenty students each, all between the ages of five and nine. Gregg and I spent the next few days meeting with Roberto, members of the local community and various contractors to arrange quotes for a complete overhaul to the facility. During this time we also scouted out a nearby squatting or slum community, commonly referred to as ´Invasión´ by the Arequipeño people. Gregg had previously visited this area in June and identified it as an ideal location for a new school as it had a large population of school aged children not receiving any form of education.
With appropriate renovations to the nearly condemned facility in Characato including proper flooring, plastered walls, improved lighting, glass windows (to replace the present cardboard panes), more tables, chairs, basic supplies and a new dividing wall the school would be capable of housing both the current student population and the children from the invasion community 1km away who do not currently attend school. We estimate a newly renovated building would provide a safe educational environment for approximately seventy-five students.
We head back to Lima on Wednesday. We´ll be kept busy over the next few days negotiating prices with contractors, arranging for community involvement in the construction phase, cementing agreements with the community to ensure the sustainability of the school and finalizing arrangements to ensure that the new facility is ready for the start of the school term in March next year.
Oct. 19, 2009 Return to Bustamonte Cono Norte
By: Gregg Bell
I have been anxiously anticipating my return to our school in Bustamonte Cono Norte. My last visit was in late June only weeks after the formation of the school. Over the past few months that bi-weekly updates on the children’s progression had been very exciting. It is amazing witnessing the transformational power of an education. All of the children in the school were not enrolled in a school prior to our arrival in May of this year, and now they seem to be flourishing. The class, which is now at 14, after the departure of a family which moved out of the community, is soon to master the alphabet.
Since June, there has been a transition in the role of the director of the school. Our partner the Bruce Org., which is centered in Trujillo, Peru has transition its role to our newly promoted and extremely capable director of operations in Arequipa, Mario Johnny Flores. Mario was an important part of the school’s formation and was ideal for the new role. It is great to also see the development in the community since our arrival this spring. Electrical poles have been put in place and the school now has electricity! This clears the way for the possible installation of a computer.
The profesora Erika Saavadra has been great with the niños and they clearly have a strong affection for her. At the end of this school year in Dec. She will be accompanied by a new hire Maria Lopez. Maria will be running the summer school program, during which time we expect to have increased enrollment. She will also be staying on as our permanent teacher for the 2010 school year. Maria has been teaching for the past 15 years in the public school system and we are lucky to have her on board.
At the end of this summer school period we expect the full matriculation of four of our older students into the public school system. They had been blocked due to their age and lack of prior education. We will be providing these “graduates” with continuous support by assisting with there purchase of school supplies, uniforms and transportation expenses. Helping these students over come these barriers to entry of the educational system has been our mission from the start and we are excited to see this occur. Additional mentoring in the school will always be made available to the graduates.
Now that we have locked in a three year lease of the facility, for just $20 a month!, our next projects are proving electrical infrastructure to the building and constructing a bathroom, a much needed item as the building and the near by community is without toilets.
Tomorrow we will visit Cerrito Haucsapata in the highlands of Arequipa and look further into our school construction project there.
June 5, 2009 Finding a Teacher
By: Gregg Bell
What is a school? Is it a building? A room with desks and a black board? Or is it a teacher with students, teaching. A classroom without a teacher is of little use to anyone. It’s time to find a teacher.
Today I visited the three universities in Arequipa. Johnny and I spoke with the director’s of the school of education at each university. We were looking to be put in touch with a recent graduate who is unemployed or a senior who is looking for some on the job experience. Our ideal candidate is a recent graduate who lives within a 30 minute commute from Bustamonte Cono Norte. Along with putting up flyers, we asked to have an ad placed in the school newspaper.
After a busy morning visiting the local universities, Johnny and I heading back toward the city center and found the broadcasting station for the two most prominent radio stations in Arequipa. Neither of us had ever been on the radio and we both waiting patiently in the broadcasting booth with nervous smiles on our faces. When our turn was up, we sat down with two talk hosts and spoke for about 5 minutes about the school we just setup, the community, the children and what we were looking for in a teacher. I thought it was funny that my first time on the radio was speaking in a foreign language. Regardless of what language was spoken, the experience itself was exhilarating.
We rounded out the afternoon by taking a visit to the Arequipa Department of Education government office. There I met with an assistant director. After explaining to him, what I was trying to do and the type of candidate I was looking for. He asked me to return tomorrow as he felt he knew the perfect person for the job. The next day I had four responses from our advertisements and two referrals from the director at the National University of St Augustin of Arequipa.
2009 Town Meeting
By: Gregg Bell
I have been very busy of the last few days. I met with a community in an area of the city known only as Zona 5. It is the poorest area I have visited to date. The “shanty” town is located miles behind the airport by Asociacion J.L. Bostamante y Rivero del Cono Norte. The barrio is clearly under development; however, at the moment it neither has electricity nor running water. I do not expect this to change for years to come. There is a primary school 45 minutes away in a neighboring pueblo. Due to the distance and other barriers, only a minority of the children here attend school. I spoke to the community leaders and two dozen or so families, seeking to understand their economic and social situations while explaining my proposal for a school in their district. It is exactly the type of community I had been looking for. The children do not have any accessible educational facilities and there is a large population of children in need.
The only drawback is that there is no local teacher. So I will need to find an external teacher to come to the site. The next step seems to be hammering down a location within the community for the school. The inhabitants fully understand what services will be offered and are willing to donate a location, which is great news and shows local support. Now the only way to go forward in opening the school is getting more local people involved. They have already expressed their desire for a school within their community. I can´t wait until Sunday when I return to hammer out logistics.
2009 Day Three in Arequipa, The Search Continues
By: Gregg Bell
Today I visited another 4 barrios all on the city limits, so far a total of 12. Unlike yesterday, today we stuck to the mountainous borders of the city. Again, we were able to easily find communities which did not have electricity. Nearly all of the communities did however have water wells within close proximity to the residential areas. It was also not uncommon to find public bathhouses.
Unlike Trujillo which is a sprawling metropolis, Arequipa, from my observation, is significantly denser. In many ways this geographical characteristic is beneficial, specifically in an educational sense. School buildings have limited regional effectiveness, meaning that there is a limit to the radius in which students will attend the school. One would expect that as the distance from the school increases, you will see decreasing attendance. In a very dense location, a school can serve a larger population within its effective radius. Children living in a poor high mountain side community merely have to walk down to the lower areas to find a school. This is great for the local population, but makes it harder for me to find communities that are in need of educational facilities. I know they are there, sometimes they are just difficult to find. The population clearly also sets a high value on education, which translates in student´s willingness to travel extended distances to attend a school.
At what point do you say, yes this community needs a school? At what distance do you say, that is too far to travel? Do you establish a school in an extremely poor community, that is clearly in need, when the vast majority of children do attend a school in a neighboring community, but have to travel a great distance to receive schooling? Ideally, I need to find that distance which is right on the cusp or beyond it, where students only sometimes attend due to the distance attendance barrier. You do not want families to view the school as an alternative to the state school. If a new school cuts into the radius of an existing school, even if that radius is larger than it ought to be, then there is a huge responsibility to ensure that the education provided in this new facility is better than the other school, otherwise establishing a school in a poor community is effectively doing a disservice to children. I am very conscious of this predicament and often feel very conflicted. To add to this, I get the impression that people are telling me that all of the local kids attend school because their pride or honor would be dirtied were they to admit that some children are not being educated. I visited a number of zones, where the existing schools are extremely dilapidated and worse shape than any of the schools in Trujillo. I think to myself, this might be an opportunity to establish a school in a better setting, using the existing teacher and simply seek to increase the class size? At all times, I keep having to remind myself that our schools are for children that don´t have other educational alternatives or have been abandoned by the school system. Children not going to school – this is what we are interested in and this is what we seek to change. Just because an area is extremely impoverished and doesn´t have basic utilities and such, if they have access to a school, then I am in the wrong locations and as much as I would like to help the community, my services are better utilized elsewhere.
2009 A Constant Reminder
By: Gregg Bell
I love traveling around South America. Where ever you are, home is never far away. The constant reminder of this for me is the abundance of people in every city that I have visited that are wearing Yankees hats. Some are the real things, others are some crazy knockoff. I´ve seen pink Yankees hats, Yankees hats with Mets colors, army Yankee hats, and every variation in between. I wonder sometimes whether the people wearing the hats even know who the Yankees are. Either way seeing a Yankees logo on a 50 year old Peruvian mother of five has a strange way of putting a smile on my face.
2009 My First Day in Arequipa
By: Gregg Bell
It took me 23 hours in a bus but I finally arrived in Arequipa this morning. The city appears larger than Trujillo although I am told it has roughly the same population. The size might be misleading because unlike Trujillo which is sprawling, Arequipa is situated in a valley surrounded on one side by a magnificent mountain range and on the other side by a cannon only comparable to those in Colorado. One mountain in particular reminds me a lot of Mt. Fuji, it is called Misti and is reportable an active volcano but I am assured that it is closely monitored.
I spent the first part of the day finding a hostel and taking in the beautiful views from the city plaza. Around one o’clock I hailed a taxi and meet my driver Jorge, who has lived in Arequipa for his entire life and has three young children. I explained the purpose of my visit to Arequipa to Jorge and we proceeded to discuss the importance of education for Latin American development, as we drove to the poorest zone of the city. We drove for about twenty five minutes and finally arrived in a barrio called Bostamante. This small pueblo was literally carved into the mountainside and was the outermost edge of the city limits. We crossed to the other side of the train tracks, passed by the last telephone and electricity pole and arrived in a sad and barren environment. Unlike the green city center, this pueblo was nothing but rock and dirt. It was clear that the people living here had a difficult existence. There was no running water, no utilities of any sort, no market and only a patchwork of unfinished roads. We parked the car and I got out to speak with some of the local people. As I was informed by Jorge, the locals verified that there was no school in the town and children had to walk 4 km to the crowded school in the next town over. I thought to myself, I may have just found the first location for our school, but I couldn’t let myself finish that quickly. We returned to the car and visited two other poor barrios in the afternoon. I wanted to visit at lease seven before officially approaching any community leaders.
2009 The Cock Fight
By: Gregg Bell
I attended a cock fight in Trujillo with a couple of friends last night. The event surprised me and failed to meet any of expectations. Unlike the gruesome spectacle I was anticipating, I found it to be more about community relationships than sport. The event started at 7pm and we arrived just in time for the first of 5 matches each consisting of two rounds, which most closely resembled boxing. The arena was a small circular coliseum which had about 8 levels down to the ring.
The place was full of excitement when we took our seats. People were placing their bets and showing their cocks off to the spectators. Contestants which were yet to compete were closely held and displayed by their owners, as they sat in the stands watching the fights. I had a great time with my English buddy spitting cock joke commentary the entire time. None of the cocks died and their was little if any blood, which did not dull the excitement in the least. The cocks were amazing specimens. Each was clearly a prized possession of their owner and well cared for. The rounds seemed to increase in skill level until the last fight which matched up the largest and most athletic cocks. One was black with a red crest and the other was predominantly white. Both had sharp spurs strapped to their hind legs. I left the event a little drunk, highly entertained and with 4 new Peruvian friends who ended up buying all our drinks due to poorly placed bets.
2009 A Fight and a New Perspective
By: Gregg Bell
Today was a brutal awakening for me. For the first time, I got a glimpse into the family life of three siblings who attend my school. The day started no different from any other. I woke up at 7:45 and was able to make it out the door just in time to grab the 8:20 combie bus to Milagro. The bus is always packed, but for one sol, the public transit system is surprisingly cheap and reliable. It took about twenty minutes to get to the outer barrio and I was glad that their were no live stock on the bus. My previous days journey had entailed sitting next to a women and her chicken.
As the kids started to arrive at school, it became apparent that we were missing an entire family of students. They had been absent the day before, so the full time teacher and I both felt that we should stop by the children´s house after school to make sure everything was alright.
The family lived about a ten minute walk from the school building, in the direction of the desert. As I walked through the barrio each street revealed increasingly more dilapidated buildings. Not one house was completed and most seemed to be missing entire walls. One of the older students guided us as we crisscrossed the neighborhood. Upon arriving at the absent children's house, I saw one of my students named Lucero standing in the doorway. As I approached the house her pregnant mother appeared with another baby in her arms. As Lurdis, the student´s full time teacher, spoke to the mother, I asked Lucero why she and her two older brothers were not in class. She said that her brothers were at work and she had to stay home and help her mother. I was glad to see that they were not sick. Lucero´s mother told us that all three of her children would be in class the nxt day. The house was a small mud and brick single story square building. The inside walls were tarred black from smoke and the floor was dirt with guinea pigs freely running around on the floor. I found it interesting to see the children´s home, but it was what I learned on my walk back to the school that stuck with me.
Lucero was one of eighteen, soon to be nineteen, children, of which twelve were still living in the tiny house I had just left. I couldn´t believe that twelve people could even fit in the one room building. Her father was rarely present and her mother was illiterate, making it more of a challnge to convince her that she should send her children to school rather than have them work and earn money for the family. They lived one block from the local prostitution house, a building which was indistinguishable from the other dilapidated homes except for a large wall surrounding the property, which I assume was meant to provide some privacy. Lucero and her brothers would have to walk by this building everyday on their way to school. Her brothers, like many of the other children in the barrio worked to help support the family. They worked 60 hour weeks, either at the garbage dump, collecting plastic and metal scraps, for which they would be paid by the kilo. Ten centivos (2.8 US cents) for a bag of 18 kilos or approximately 40 pounds. The alternative to working at the dump is to work in the brick making fields turning over bricks so that they dry evenly. The benefit of working at the dump was that it did not conflict with attending school, however, the pay was not as good. The brick making factory unfortunately required being out in the hot sun all day. Both jobs were physically exhausting for the children. Lucero´s family is the typical example of a family that is spiraling deeper into poverty with each new child, as already limited resources are subdivided to provide for another person.
I was happy to see that Lucero was at school the next day; however, her brothers were still absent. Instead, her mother sent with her, Franky, Lurcero´s two year old brother. He was too young to be attending school but was to cute to turn away. I gave him some crayons to draw with and a sandwich for lunch. The school day seemed to be going very well, until two of the older boys got into a fight. Before I could step in and break them up, Caesar had punched Luis in the face three or tour times and Luis had retaliated by striking Caesar in the mouth. Both were bleeding all over themselves. I was totally surprised by the level of violence the two friends had displayed toward each other.
The fight required another visit to the students houses. Luis´ mother was not home but when we told his aunt about what happened, she seemed totally uninterested. Caesar´s mother was home, but reluctant to talk to us as she had been drinking. I learned the next day when Luis did not come to school, that the boys had gotten into another fight later that day and Luis might not be attending classes anymore. Hopefully, this is not the case. As terrible as the two days were, the experience helped me to understand the challenges that many of my students face in their lives outside of the school and why they act out.
04.22.09 IRS Recognition
By: Gregg Bell
The IRS has officially recognized us as a registered tax exempt 501(c)3 charity! It took a little longer than expected, but it´s now official.
2009 A Visit to the Dentist
By: Gregg Bell
Today the Bruce Organization hosted a dentist visiting from the United Status. Sponsored by Desana, an American philanthropic organization. The dentist came to Trujillo and offered free dental exams and cleaning. All of the children at our schools, a total of 73 students were seen by the dentist over a period of three days. For many of the children it was their first visit to a dentist. In total, 21 rotten teeth were pulled and each child was given instruction on proper dental care along with a tooth brush and paste. Unfortunately, the fluoride gum along with all of the dental equipment sent from the United States was held up in Peruvian customs.
A local Peruvian dentist was kind enough to offer Dr. Houk the use of her examination room within the Milagro Medical Center. Once the children arrived at school in the morning, we all got into a bus and traveled 10 minutes to the local medical center. Despite being fully equipped, the center still lacked running water, as does much of the city. Tanks of water are distributed to the outer barrios everyday by truck. Some lucky areas of town have water piped to a central distribution station.
The American dental groups visit was a tremendous treat for the students. We are working with the local dentist to allow for continued free medical services to our children.
2009 Trujillo, Peru
By: Gregg Bell
I have started a one month project volunteering with a educational development NGO called Bruce Peru. Approximately 25% of children within Trujillo and its surrounding regions do not attend school, which to me is an astonishing number.Trujillo is an attractive colonial city in the north of Peru. It has a population of about one million and is well off the tourist’s path.
There are a variety of reasons why children do not attend classes but primarily it’s due to the families not being able to afford enrollments and their failure to register the children for classes. Most of the children’s parents did not attend school themselves, resulting in a low appreciation for education. In addition, some of the kids are asked to work to help support their family. How do we go about providing a solution? Three weeks prior to my arrival, a number of the other volunteers, of which there are eight, got into taxis and asked to be driving to the poorest barrios in Trujillo. They literally walked the dirt streets knocking on doors to find children who were not in school. Finding kids was not difficult. It was however challenging to convince the parents that they should attend a school. This was done by sitting down with the children’s parents, discussing the benefits of our schools and encouraging them to have their children attend. The Peruvian School system will accept all 6 year old children into their kindergarten class. These children must, however, be registered, pay a small entrance fee and purchase a uniform. Our students are provided assistance with all three of these. Some of the children that we found were six so we got them registered, purchase a uniform for them and got them directly into the public school system. The rest of the students were enrolled in our feeder school, where they would remain until they became eligible for the public school system. This usually meant attending classes with us for 6 months to a year. Children of any age greater than six must pass an entrance exam to be enrolled in classes. Unfortunately, the way the system is setup, as a child gets older it becomes harder and harder for them to get into the public school system because the difficulty of the test is dependent on age. This however, is only a tiny barrier to entry. Most students do not get into the system because they can not afford it or were never registered. My school has 15 students in it, with ages ranging from 7 to 13. The students will be in our school until they are able to enter the public system. It is often difficult to teach because the students are all at different levels. Primarily, we teach the alphabet along with basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. The Bruce Peru Organization employs one full time teacher for each school and currently operates six schools in various barrios throughout Trujillo. The teachers are university students who are training for a career in education. What are the School Conditions? Once we had enough students for a class we needed to find a location for the school. For each of the schools we were able to rent a room either in someone’s home or in a public building. The rooms are very basic. Only one of the barrios has running water and most do not have electricity. Sanitation is a major problem in the area. I have found it very difficult to teach general hygiene without water. Each day at noon we provide the students with a meal. For some this is their only real meal for the day! I work is one of the poorest barrios in Trujillo called Milagro. The kids I teach are very excited to be in school, but often look exhausted. I found out that two of the kids, a brother and sister, work nights at the dump scavenging for anything of value. Knowing this makes it difficult for me to wake them up when they are in class, as you can see how tired they are. What are the Costs? It costs about $155 for a child to attend one of our schools for a year. This expense is entirely covered by the organization. It includes the cost of school materials, transport of teachers and volunteers to the schools, daily lunches, medical assistance and registration fees when a child is entered into the national school system.
12.10.08 - Child Poverty In Peru
By: Gregg Bell
South American poverty is highly hereditary. The educational system is appallingly inegalitarian, and children from poor families are likely to receive low-quality primary education and to drop out before finishing secondary school; only a small minority of children of uneducated or poorly educated parents are able to complete secondary school, which is generally estimated to be the threshold above which chances to escape the poverty trap are good. Children from poor families are often disadvantaged prior to their entry into primary school. To break the intergenerational transmission it is necessary to start with those children living in poverty, and to support their educational development as early and as comprehensively as possible. Interventions that combine nutrition and education are likely to be the most effective strategies and the longer-term benefits of early childhood interventions lead to earnings opportunities in later years, and a reduced risk of participation in criminal activities and drug use.(Poverty Reduction in S. America) This also reduces the social and political threat of instability brought upon by poverty, which affect the economy, environment and national security on a global scale.
The Current State of Poverty in the Andean Region
“Poverty is a result of people's inability to attain food, shelter, money, clothing, education, and any other essentials towards the well being of living.”(Wiki) The most widely referenced metric, used to assess populations across the globe, is the World Bank’s poverty line. Defined and calculated based off of both food and non-food expenditures, the line partitions the lowest end of the economic spectrum into two classes: below the “poverty line” and below the “extreme poverty line”. The extreme line is equivalent to two thirds the value of the benchmark line, which currently is approximated at $2 USD per day. The Peruvian population living below this line and that residing below the extreme line, at $1.30 USD per day, has participated in little of the country’s impressive 8% annual economic growth over the past decade. Communities and families are all too often cut off from the market economy, preventing the trickledown effect of prosperous economic times. In 2004, over half of Peru’s population of 29 million was living at or below two dollars a day. (Poverty Amid Progress.The Economist). While urban poverty has been increasing rapidly in many Latin American countries, it is still appreciably more widespread in rural areas. Peru’s polarizing geography in many ways acts as a physical barrier preventing the flow of the benefits produced from economic growth. In addition to suffering from financial insolvency, the rural population is severely discriminated against, with limited access to clean water, sanitation services, health and education. 
Children tend to be the victims and are more exposed than adults. This is due to the fact that poor families tend to have more children than non-poor families thus putting a larger strain on already limited resources. It is estimated that more than two out of every five children under the age of nine in the region, some 43 million children live on less than two dollars a day. Peru is the fastest growing economy in South America, yet poverty levels are below those of neighboring countries Ecuador and Columbia. Poverty is truly an epidemic and is directly targeting Peruvian children. Over 70 percent of the Andean region lives on less than $2 a day, despite nearly a decade of political reform aimed at combating this issue and record economic growth. (P&P in Peru)
Recent development has had little positive impact on the poorest segments of the population. As of 2008, 17.9% of the Peruvian and 19.3% of the Bolivian populations were illiterate.(UIS Statistics. UNESCO) Poverty indexes are highest in provinces where more than half of the population speaks their native language. In addition, these regions also record the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, which is the highest in South America. The poverty incidence of infants, children below age five, is 27% higher than all other age groups, followed by that of adolescent children ages 6-14 which is 25% higher than the next age demographic.(Poverty Profile Executive Summary, Republic of Peru. Japan Bank For International Cooperation) Many families, primarily of the indigenous population, are trapped in subsistence farming on small plots of land and are unable to provide educational opportunities to their children. Solely native language speakers, such as Quechua, comprise 27% of the total population. Rural households that draw their income mainly from agriculture are more likely to live below the poverty line, where as a household with at least one member with non-farm employment is 23% less likely to be poor. Poverty is very closely tied to education in Peru, where the net enrolment ratio for secondary level education is 37.5% among the poorest group and only 5.7% of those living below the extreme line complete secondary education. Parents are often forced to make their children work in the fields or leave their homes for cities where they might receive schooling. Unfortunately, this good natured decision, often leads to abuse and neglect, as young children have no choice but to work in shops, restaurants or on the street to provide means to pay their way into a home and obtain meals. Many children become disillusioned and homeless, retreating into themselves, turning to alcohol, drugs, prostitution and begging to satisfy hunger.
The Peruvian government with the help of the World Bank is taking steps to combat this issue in the region; but needs help from the worldwide community to be successful. “The government has drawn up a new anti-poverty strategy which focuses on trying to end the malnutrition that affects 30% of children in Peru and Bolivia, most of them in the southern Andes.” (UNESCO) Tackling this effectively means reforming and providing increased access to quality education and health facilities. Peru has to its benefit the fact that much of its growth has been built on solid foundations and the diversification of the economy, which will increase the disbursement of benefits to more of the population and act to counter a global economic slowdown.
“Trade, private investment and domestic consumption are all growing at close to 20% a year which is driving the economy forward at an accelerating pace. The national savings rate has risen to 24% of GDP, high by regional standards, and the government last year posted a fiscal surplus of 3%. Peru’s debt was recently awarded an investment-grade credit ratings. Although the number of formal sector jobs is expanding at 9% a year, many Peruvians still labor in the informal sector of unregistered businesses.” (UNESCO)
Lack of public funding, an inefficient centralized educational management structure and poor education levels in rural regions are some of the major challenges that the government faces today in regards to education. Although six years of primary education is compulsory, regular attendance and lack of resources is a major hurdle. Teachers are often inadequately trained and schools lack effective teaching materials. If student’s fall behind or drop out for any length of time, they often encounter difficulty returning to the educational system due to entrance exam minimum score requirements.
Government policies that aid the poor, such as investments in primary education, water sanitation and health in poverty stricken areas, rural infrastructure, and enhanced employment opportunities for low-skilled workers improve the productive capacity of the whole economy and raises domestic demand for basic goods and services. Policies which improve education and reduce unemployment have been shown to enhance social cohesion and reduce problems related to social exclusion, crime and violence which, in addition to lowering the overall quality of life, also have large negative repercussions on the entire environment for growth and development.(Poverty Reduction in S. America) Peru’s plans to combat domestic poverty and promote continued growth and stability are entrenched in providing better educational opportunities to the population and spreading the benefits of economic development. There is pronounced gender inequality in Latin America, that is not only bad in itself, but it is also bad for economic growth. Numerous studies demonstrate that improving female’s access to education, credit and productive resources has a very positive impact on economic development.
Peru as a Strategic Launch Location
Of the major Latin American countries, Peru and Bolivia have the highest percentages of its population living below one US dollar a day. The two counties have the highest illiteracy and infant mortality rates in the continent. The average life expectancy in these two countries is nearly 10 years below that of neighboring Chile.(CIA Fact Book 2008) At the same time, Peru is the fastest growing economy in the region and unlike many of its neighbors the growth has resulted in the diversification of the economy. The country is full of hope and poised for a period of reform and greater distribution of prosperity. The capacity to materially improve the quality of life of a large percentage of its population has never been greater. The poverty trap which has engulfed much of the rural population can be broken by targeting the source of intergenerational poverty transmission, lack of education. Safety levels are at regional highs with low levels of criminal activity creating an environment which is accommodating to aid workers, further encouraging support from the Peruvian government and the international community at large. Progress, however, will not be obtained without determination, a locally supported tactful approach and an open and honest dialogue with the target population.
Target Region demographics:
Maternal mortality rate = 26.5%
Infant mortality rate = 23.0%
Children mortality rate = 31.0%
Illiteracy level = 21.7%
Poverty rate = 70.0%
The beneficiaries are approximately 2.8 million people.
Peruvian Departments that are in the most need: Ayacucho, Apurimac, Huanuco, and Huancavelica
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