Two weeks after arriving in the US; my life already seems gobbled up by the business of the US. I have had only a bit of time to reflect on what my three months in Peru meant: much too much to wittily summarize in this blog. But I am grateful for the opportunity that AP presented me: to work in partnership with SKIP staff and volunteers and to engage with many different kinds of people about how US citizens can appropriately support advocacy and development efforts of communities in the global south. It is such a knotty question and one that both AP and SKIP are intent on tackling. I also know that it all boils down to the relationships we are able to forge across boarders and barriers. For this reason I am especially grateful to all the staff and volunteers of SKIP, and in particular to those with whom I worked most closely. Bee, Lourdes and Wlad, your dedication, integrity and your sheer will in the face of constant daily challenges inspires me!

It’s amazing how much can get done when you set your mind to it. Especially when you can share the work-alcoholic spirit with others; in my case Berangere, the director, Lourdes, the Project Coordinator and Wladimir, the Education Coordinator. Berangere and Lourdes seem to have sworn off sleep. We (and the other staff/volunteers) have been working on redefining SKIP's model of social change, updating the vision and mission statements, evaluating the effectiveness of SKIP's work, coming up with indicators to measure the program’s impact, developing a new project to tackle the thorny issue of education quality and working on a long-term strategic plan for the organization. Which is a fancy way of saying a lot of meetings and a lot of computer time.

By far the most inspiring in the endless string of meetings were those we organized last weekend with the mothers (and two fathers) who are a part of SKIP’s programs. The goal was simple: find out what they think of SKIP. It was the first time the organization has formally sought to include the voices of the families with which it works in the planning process. To be fair, this is the first time that the organization has been involved in formal planning. It took a lot of preparation and skillful facilitation by Lourdes to create an environment in which parents shared their criticism and suggestions for improvement. For me, it was moving to hear their stories. Parents told of their frustration when they can’t help with their children’s school work because they didn’t finish primary school; of not being able to afford the matriculation, uniform and school supply costs and having the tell their child: “maybe you can go back to school next year;” of their children being marginalized by teachers who get upset when families can’t afford the required (and sometime ridiculous) list of school supplies; and of the general weariness of struggling everyday but never having enough.

After the meeting

Lourdes and me

Now the challenge is to use their feedback and a better understanding of their reality to strengthen SKIP’s programs so that together we can build a Peru where each child realizes their full potential through a quality education, economically stable families and healthy home-environments (the organization’s new vision statement!).

Men move quick and sure as they pack a mixture of dirt and sand into molds to make bricks, building houses from the desert.

On a run-down, crowed bus a young woman holds a baby whose face is deformed by a clef lip. She notices me staring and when I look back, she has covered her baby’s face. According to Operation Smile, corrective surgery costs $240, more than the average monthly income for many.

On my first day at the office the street out front is empty but for a group of three young boys, beautifully and fittingly, playing with a tire.

A glint of defiance creeps into 10 year old Diana’s eyes when she explains her orphan status and why she wants to be a part of SKIP: “My mom abandoned me after my father died.”

Ron, Leña, Carbon, Briquettas (Rum, Firewood, Charcoal, and Stove Fuel) are the only advertised items on the wall outside a tiny store owned by one of the SKIP mothers.

No reliable garbage service forces families to dump trash in pits or burn it. As a result the desert landscape is littered with trash.

El Porvenir is not one of the districts served by Juntos, a government-run conditional cash-transfer program lauded as ambitious and innovative; it isn’t poor enough. The child malnutrition rate in El Porvenir is 22% as compared to 72% in Banbamarca, another town in the same department.

El Porvenir

On the walk back from a meeting with a group of mothers, we pass shacks made of sugar cane stalks that are half the size of my bedroom. A series of three have small flower gardens out front and I am struck: hope lives.

This article (written by yours truly) about SKIP will appear (shortly!) in an trade magazine called Oportunidades

Innovative Approaches to Education: Reaching Children Living in Persistent Poverty

Education is the foundation of development and a critical step along the path out of poverty. Unfortunately, the Peruvian education system is fraught with problems. Over the last 30 years Peru has made great strides to increase enrollment; indeed official figures cite near 100% enrollment in urban primary schools. But the reality seems to be otherwise. In 2003, a group of British volunteers discovered that in an urban slum outside of Trujillo, El Porvenir, many families were unable to pay fees demanded by local Parent Associations (APAFA’s) for school maintenance, supplies, uniforms, and the right to take exams. These small fees can add up to one or two hundred dollars a year and lead to the systematic exclusion of the poorest children from the education system. Families were sometimes forced to send children as young as five to work in the streets often selling candy or collecting garbage.

These volunteers teamed up with local community leaders to address the problem and Supporting Kids in Peru (SKIP) was born. The principal goal of SKIP is to help create the necessary conditions so that all children in El Porvenir, especially those of the poorest families, have access to quality education. SKIP firmly believes that families themselves should eventually take responsibility for the costs of their children’s education and has developed a set of holistic programmes to support families make this transition.

SKIP began modestly by helping 50 poor families send their children to school. This year SKIP is proud to work with 420 children and their families, ensuring access to public school as well as providing additional academic help and other support services that address the complex problem of exclusion from the education system: emotional well-being, health & nutrition, family stability and the economic situation of the family. This year the demand for the program was more than three times the allotment of places permitted by the budget.

Our multi-faceted approach reintegrates children in local public schools while ensuring they have the means to stay there. We provide each child with at least 120 hours of extra classes each year, tutoring for children with learning disabilities, all necessary school supplies as well as attendance and academic progress monitoring. SKIP’s English programme reaches 1300 children with 36 hours of weekly instruction provided by native English speakers and includes training for current Peruvian English teachers. Our new programme targeting secondary school students provides academic mentoring and grants to study English in Trujillo. The SKIP team also includes professional psychologists and social workers, adding depth to the support we provide to SKIP families. One of their projects involves on-going classes for parents on nutrition, family planning, parenting skills and other important topics.

In 2003 SKIP launched an Economic Development project aimed at empowering families to pay for their children’s education by supporting income-generating activities for people living in persistent poverty. The project provides training, accounting workshops, business assessment & advice and micro-loans for small scale enterprises. In 2005 SKIP implemented an innovative interest-free micro-credit program with a rotating capital pool. These micro-loans range from 50 soles to 300 soles and the success is in the numbers: the repayment rate is 95%.

SKIP relies on volunteers to provide many of these services and has attracted long-term volunteers from over 20 countries while working with more than 60 Peruvian volunteers each year. This innovative programme promotes cultural exchange and seeks to encourage a sense of social responsibility amongst all our volunteers.

SKIP depends on the generosity of individual donors and volunteers. For more information about how you or can help us build a Peru where all children have access to quality education visit www.skipperu.org or contact@skipperu.org.

The following is a (rather dry) survey of Peru's education system.

Peruvian schools have sacrificed quality for coverage

Peru has a long historical and cultural commitment to education; laws have mandated pubic education since independence. The constitution explicitly recognizes the fundamental right to education and includes guarantees to free primary education. Enrollment rates in Peruvian schools are impressive; the UNESCO Institute for Statistics cites primary enrollment rates of 97% for girls and 96% for boys while 72% of girls and 72% of boys are enrolled in secondary school. While these statistics may mask systematic exclusion of poor children, Peru is achieving more coverage than its Latin American neighbors with higher per capita incomes. Drop out rates remain problematic; 14% of urban children and 35% of rural children do not complete high school. Peru spends 3.3% of GDP on education, lagging behind the 4.5% of GDP average of other Latin America countries.

Unfortunately, Peru has sacrificed coverage for quality. Peru’s quality of math and science instruction is ranked last of the 127 countries evaluated by the World Economic Forum and second to last in overall quality of education. On the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Peruvian students scored lower than students in any other Latin American country and they only perform at 5% of the OECD average. In an informal survey by the World Bank, 70% of first grade students could not read a single word. Many studies, authored by Peruvians and international experts, have attempted to disentangle the reasons for these failures. The World Bank identifies the major obstacles as a lack of educational resources and incentives to motivate quality teaching, poor management, the challenges of teaching a multi-lingual populous, and poverty. They advocate for universal basic standards for reading and math, systems to measure progress, and increased accountability for school expenditures. Peruvian experts recommend classifying schools based on their student populations, prioritizing participatory processes, building the capacity of education institutions, and improving the skills of teachers. Quality teaching is clearly an issue: only 151 out of 180,000 teachers passed a recent exam administered by the Ministry of Education.

Half Built City

The plane descends into a haze as it lands in the lonely airport of Trujillo, Peru. Ocean and mountains are both near, but only barely visible through dusty grey skies. The air smells vaguely of fish. I deplane with the other passengers and marvel at the seemingly endless luggage of a group of surfers, likely headed to the popular beach town Huanchaco just outside Trujillo. I’ll also be spending much of my summer on the outskirts of Peru’s second largest city but with a rather different agenda. As an AP fellow I’ll be working alongside a team of Peruvians and international volunteers to develop a long term strategic plan for the organization SKIP (Supporting Kids in Peru). SKIP advocates for the right of children to a quality education by providing academic and financial support to kids who would otherwise be excluded from the education system by the poverty of their families.

SKIP works in El Porvenir, a rapidly expanding outgrowth of Trujillo. This pueblo joven (young city) grows as Peruvians trying to escape rural poverty flock to urban centers. The landscape of El Porvenir is bleak and desert-like; sand mixed with trash is everywhere. The community abuts stark mountains with sand dunes creeping up their sides. Paved roads are few. Most families have electricity, but many lack access to clean water and other basic services. Over 100,000 live here in houses of mud bricks or in impossibly small shacks made of dried sugar cane stalks. Construction is continuous. Nearly all of the more permanent houses seem half-built with iron rods sticking out of the roofs as if the habitants either ran out of resources before construction finished or remain tenaciously hopeful that soon the money to build a second story will materialize.

Poverty persists in Peru despite strong macroeconomic growth (among the best in Latin America according to the IMF.) Around half of Peruvians are considered poor and 20% qualify as extremely poor. (Also see a recent Economist article: Poverty amid Progress.)