Every child deserves the opportunity to be educated no matter where they live. Guaruchal is an isolated community in Venezuela, where only one out of 15 people have the privilege to go to school. This community has a one-space wooden shack without the adequate physical conditions to teach children elementary school. They have one dream: to build a proper school that serves their 115 children from nursery to primary school, using local materials. We have the tools to build that dream together
41% of adolescents of the community are not within the school system due to the distances (about 1 hour) they must walk to the nearest high school. 67% of children under 12 do not attend school due to a lack of capacity in the current space. As a consequence, women in the family are responsible for childcare, which prevents them from developing economic activities. The community approached Tracing Public Spaces (Trazando Espacios Publicos - TEP) for support in the construction of the new school.
TEP and its partners provide an innovative participatory method to design and construct the school with the community, from children to grandparents. By participating in this process, they will strengthen their sense of belonging to the new school built with local materials and feel empowered to transform other aspects of their personal and community life, and mothers will have the opportunity to develop economic activities enabling their growth and social mobility.
This project will open the doors of the educational system to 115 children between 6 months and 13 years old in adequate spaces that will allow their development and acquisition of knowledge and skills, at the same time it will contribute to the insertion of 120 women in the economic system. This educational center will also promote livelihood training for young adults and organized community activities by including multi-functional spaces to respond to different needs and community gatherings.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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