By Mr. Webster
In most ways, the Peru experience was what I expected it to be, except more and better. The one area where our experience differed from my expectations was the school construction project. In short, we expected to be building walls or putting in a foundation, but found we needed to shift our emphasis to reflect local conditions.
If you take a look at some of the photos of Bandolista elsewhere in this blog, you will see that it is an unadorned village of adobe huts with very few amenities. I am not sure when an outside group last offered resources to the village, but the answer may be never. They have a community center which doubles as their school for ages 3-5; it provides a room with a few tables and chairs with few actual educational materials. World Leadership School is working with the community president, Salvador, to improve the school facilities, but the community has not achieved consensus on what the project should ultimately look like. Some would like to tear down the current building, keep some of the materials, and recreate it elsewhere. Others would like to keep the building and improve it, and build a new community center elsewhere. WLS falls in the latter camp, but is the outsider.
As we spent a few days creating bottles for the Eco Brick construction method, it became clear that we had no idea whether or when the current building would be moved. It was also clear to me that, given this fact, it would not be satisfying to our students to create bottles and leave them behind for some future construction work. That could be part of our work, but I felt (and our WLS instructors agreed) that, in the circumstances, it would be best to create some changes that would be useful right away and might even make it likelier that the community would choose to keep the current building. So we set out to create a set of blocks for the Bandolista students to play with, and to use as a learning tool. The shapes were cut for us, and we then sanded and painted them. For the one that were cubes we painted one series with letters on them and others with numbers. For the letter ones, we put a word and a picture related to the letter; for the numbers, we added the appropriate series of dots, to help the students link numbers and amounts. At the same time, we arranged to have the external walls plastered. We sanded the walls and painted them. The students now have a block center and alphanumeric learning aids, along with a new, colorful look for their school, as you will see in the picture. We will also use some of the remaining funds from the trip to purchase more learning materials for the classroom. While the community members work out their plans for the future, their students will enjoy a better school facility. We hope to be part of the long term solution in the future. Once we shifted gears, our kids worked hard to bring the short-term plan to fruition. And we learned (as we did also in Patacancha) that development is a tricky business sometimes filled with competing agendas that require compromise.
Here's a picture of the school as we left it:
The picture doesn't quite do it justice. The vibrant color stands out in the field of adobe in all the surrounding buildings and announces the building as someplace special. I think I can speak for the whole Peru Crew that we love it and hope that it will be improved further and maintained as the school.
In most ways, the Peru experience was what I expected it to be, except more and better. The one area where our experience differed from my expectations was the school construction project. In short, we expected to be building walls or putting in a foundation, but found we needed to shift our emphasis to reflect local conditions.
If you take a look at some of the photos of Bandolista elsewhere in this blog, you will see that it is an unadorned village of adobe huts with very few amenities. I am not sure when an outside group last offered resources to the village, but the answer may be never. They have a community center which doubles as their school for ages 3-5; it provides a room with a few tables and chairs with few actual educational materials. World Leadership School is working with the community president, Salvador, to improve the school facilities, but the community has not achieved consensus on what the project should ultimately look like. Some would like to tear down the current building, keep some of the materials, and recreate it elsewhere. Others would like to keep the building and improve it, and build a new community center elsewhere. WLS falls in the latter camp, but is the outsider.
As we spent a few days creating bottles for the Eco Brick construction method, it became clear that we had no idea whether or when the current building would be moved. It was also clear to me that, given this fact, it would not be satisfying to our students to create bottles and leave them behind for some future construction work. That could be part of our work, but I felt (and our WLS instructors agreed) that, in the circumstances, it would be best to create some changes that would be useful right away and might even make it likelier that the community would choose to keep the current building. So we set out to create a set of blocks for the Bandolista students to play with, and to use as a learning tool. The shapes were cut for us, and we then sanded and painted them. For the one that were cubes we painted one series with letters on them and others with numbers. For the letter ones, we put a word and a picture related to the letter; for the numbers, we added the appropriate series of dots, to help the students link numbers and amounts. At the same time, we arranged to have the external walls plastered. We sanded the walls and painted them. The students now have a block center and alphanumeric learning aids, along with a new, colorful look for their school, as you will see in the picture. We will also use some of the remaining funds from the trip to purchase more learning materials for the classroom. While the community members work out their plans for the future, their students will enjoy a better school facility. We hope to be part of the long term solution in the future. Once we shifted gears, our kids worked hard to bring the short-term plan to fruition. And we learned (as we did also in Patacancha) that development is a tricky business sometimes filled with competing agendas that require compromise.
Here's a picture of the school as we left it:
1 comments:
Hi Andy,
We can see that competing agendas can lead to a stalemate in the US Congress as well. Unfortunately sometimes the focus is making sure the other guy doesn't get what he wants instead of finding a way for all to benefit and move forward. Let's hope this is a lesson in compromise that our students learned.
Thank you again to you, Jim and Tanda for giving them a rich experience.
Best regards,
Nancy Levine
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