Self-Sustainable Education in Paraguay

Paraguay is full of young people of untapped potential to achieve great things, innovators and entrepreneurs with all the capacity already inside, just waiting for the right combination of tools to help them realize that potential and release it.  The Financially Self-Sustainable School model looks to provide quality education at low cost to these young people from chronically poor rural areas (including socially marginalized groups such as indigenous youth, pregnant girls/teenage mothers) by offering a market-based curriculum of higher educational quality with better employment outcomes for its students.  The model adopts a two-pillar framework of education, academic and practical, with the aim of fostering foundational academic understanding, developing marketable professional skills, and inspiring a lifelong spirit of entrepreneurship, self-reliance, and civic engagement in a rural context.  Students realize their social opportunity through education that goes above and beyond the traditional curriculum to include classes in networking, leadership, organizational behavior, marketing, and financial literacy to better prepare them for their futures. The “learning by doing” approach not only ensures the model’s self-sufficiency, but also requires that the curriculum changes based on market tendencies, further developing the entrepreneurial spirit of the model and the students.  The competencies developed empower vulnerable students to broaden their perception of possibility and improve their quality of life.  The school model is nothing short of a paradigm shift; it’s about changing the approach to alleviating rural poverty by providing innovative educational opportunities.  Living, working, and learning  in these environments, students experience—often for the first time—the satisfaction of being able to provide for themselves and learning about their own potential, thus unleashing the great untapped potential in poor rural youth and transforming it into opportunity.

The Financially Self-Sustainable School model has 50 replications world-wide providing students from poor, rural areas with academic, vocational, and entrepreneurial education. With an emphasis on “learning by doing, selling, and making a profit,” students spend half their time in the classroom receiving traditional instruction, and half their time “learning by doing,” being trained and mentored as they run various school businesses. Because the students run and operate the schools as part of their business skills education, the schools are financially self-sustainable, requiring no additional funding from the government or donor funds, cutting the cost of attendance and removing a common barrier to entry to receiving quality education.  Fundación Paraguaya operates 3 schools in Paraguay that have adapted the model: one in Cerrito called San Francisco, one in San Pedro, and one in Belen, each one dealing with specific intricacies of regional and cultural contexts that help mold both the model and it’s students to their maximum potential.  With your assistance, these three schools, and their future replicas, can continue the excellent work they do, and we will continue to share the inspiring stories of our students with you.  Stay tuned!