In the Classroom

Coprodeli has build 14 schools in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Peru. We spent July 1st and 2nd teaching at two of the four Coprodeli schools in Pachacutec, a shantytown in Callao about 30 miles from Lima. It is a great model, Coprodeli builds the schools, creates the ciriculum(an 8 hour school day), manages the application process which involves entrance exams and the government pays the teachers and expenses.

The contrast is striking. As my Dad talked about in his entry, Pachacutec is a shantytown where the houses have no running water, no indoor plumbing and are built on dirt floors from scrap materials. The schools on the other hand are on par with US schools. They are modern with all of features found in the states including a computer lab. It must be a huge shock to come from those houses into these schools.

We split our volunteers into two groups and both groups had spent the month prior to the trip on conference calls discussing their project, what supplies they needed to bring and who would do what. Our group decided to incorporate photography. On my last visit I remember hearing that most of these children and their parents did not have cameras and did not own photos of themselves. I remember the kids being giddy about seeing their image on the digital camera's little screen and I had wished I had a way to get the pictures to them.

We also wanted to make our project somewhat educational so we explained a little about how photography worked to the class (a very little bit). We had prepared a demonstration of how the first camera was created but after we couldn't get our demonstration to work in rehearsal we scrapped it. We took every child's individual photo (they are 40 kids to a class and kids in most of our classes were around 8 years old). We then passed out wood frames and all kinds of fun decorations: feathers, sequins, markers, glue, balls, yarn, etc. and asked the kids to decorate the frames. We then worked table to table assist them and also spent time teaching them some English words while they taught us some Spanish. Our project was really a collaboration. All 4 of us had input into the content and shared the presentation.

As each photo came out of the printer we secured them in the frames. The kids were ecstatic! They were so proud of their frame creations and their photos. Many put their names on their frames and some added their parents names. They kept asking if they could keep them. Of course!

We had some much fun working these happy, creative and energetic kids. Socio-economic and cultural differences disappear. Even language barriers seemed to get easier to manage. the kids shared the clue and decorations and shocked us with their excellent manners, patience and obedience. The teachers stayed in the classroom and helped as well. It was really a hell of a lot of fun.

OK, does this activity change the world? Does it even change the life of one child? No. But it brightens their day, it provides them with a photo to display at home in their very humble abode and it gives the kids precious attention of caring volunteers. It also brought joy to us the volunteers and every single volunteer got to see the amazing good being done in these schools and they will spread the word and the support will multiply and that will multiply the number of schools we can build and the kids we can help. Big things come out of little things.

Tom Steffanci