Support rural education in Argentina

After the activities carried out in the first months of this year, we continued with the work schedule of our project together with the schools and communities of Santiago del Estero (Argentina)

In june and july, we´ve made visits to rural schools to know about infrastructure needs. Thus, we were able to detail each of the requested reforms, establishing an order of priority in those most urgent cases, and organizing the development of interventions. To move forward with this, we meet with our local supplier to define the budget for materials and labor and define the work schedule. From August we began to carry out the works in two rural schools.

In turn, in August we began to deliver food and hygiene kits monthly to 440 families in more than 20 rural communities, with the aim of mitigating the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first weeks of that month, after more than a year and a half of absence, the face-to-face classes returned to the schools, which allowed us to reconnect with the students, and to start planning activities and workshops in the classrooms again.

One of our main concerns was the health issue of rural communities, for which we decided to urgently organize the days of primary health care in schools. After arduous logistics and organization tasks, during the last days of august we were able to take our team of doctors to visit 5 communities and offer care to 204 kids

Finally, throughout the month of september we were able to implement a series of courses for school teachers, focused on Sexual Education and ICTs.

For the last part of the year, we plan to continue with direct help to rural children and families through the delivery of food and hygiene kits, offer more training workshops for teachers, and add new activities for children in schools. Therefore, we hope to continue counting on your support!

A new year of work began and the San Genaro Foundation team continued carrying out activities of our project with Rural Schools in Santiago del Estero (Argentina).

Like every beginning of the year, our priority lies in surveying the main needs of rural communities. To reach this objective, we developed a series of surveys directed to the principals where they informed us of their situation in terms of food needs, educational materials, supplies, access to water, health of their students and educational workshops.

After the school break, on March 15 classes began throughout the Province of Santiago del Estero. Since that day, and in relation to the information collected through the surveys, we’ve made the following deliveries:

• Tool kits (full pencil case, notebook and folder) for 396 students who attend 11 schools in the program.

• Educational materials for 5 schools (maps, blackboards, world maps, cardboard, stereo, etc ...). They allow teachers to carry out the daily life of their classes

• Food kits for families who send their children to schools in the program. They were destined for 281 families.

In turn, the Buenos Aires work team, together with a group of volunteers, visited twice (April and May) the headquarters of the foundation in Santiago del Estero (Villa Ojo de Agua). On those trips, 11 rural schools participating in the program were visited. Part of the work during the visits was to talk with principals and teachers to begin planning teacher training workshops and training workshops for students. This need was one of those requested through the surveys carried out at the beginning of the year.As a complement to the work we carry out with rural schools, we also collaborate with health posts. We’ve delivered a medicines required and water purifying sachets to the sanitary agents. Finally, we want to tell you that we are already working on organizing a trip with our team of health professionals for the month of July: we will be holding primary health care days in rural communities. Also, as a measure to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, we will be delivering hygiene kits to each of the rural families

These were months of hard work in which we were able to collaborate with families, teachers and managers in the areas of nutrition, education and health, which we consider essential for the development of a strengthened community.