CERPI, Sucre, Bolivia Octobre 2022
In the city of Sucre, just under 2 km from the Plaza 25 de Mayo, or about twenty minutes on foot, on the other side of ruta 6, there is an accessible educational center for children, the morning and afternoon, outside of their school hours. The “Centro de Recursos Pedagógicos Integrales” (CERPI), or the Center for Integral Pedagogical Resources, is a project that has existed since 1976 and was created to reduce the gap in educational inequalities present in the peri-urban areas of Sucre. The CERPI aims to strengthen the education of girls and boys in rural, peri-urban and urban areas to prevent them from deserting and falling behind in school.
The CERPI and its multiple services…
The Center for Integral Pedagogical Resources provides access to a number of resources for children from families who do not have too many means and who therefore cannot enroll their children in private schools. The CERPI allows children to practice artistic, sports and educational activities and to have some school support. Indeed, the center offers children from 3 to 18 years old homework support through a workshop and a school refresher with teachers. It also offers various artistic, sports and educational workshops such as music, painting, classical and folk dance, basketball and football, taekowndo and personal defense workshops as well as a chess workshop. Children can also attend some computer and English lessons. All these courses are given by professionals from each discipline. The CERPI also provides children with pedagogical assistance with an educational adviser, psychological assistance with an educational psychologist and social and personal assistance with a social worker.
The CERPI is known to all parents in Sucre because it is the only center offering both school support, artistic and sports workshops and psychological and social assistance. Parents can register their children for the services offered and for three of the activities offered, for a symbolic price of 20 Bs per week, or a little less than 3€. The families benefiting from the project can also have meetings and training on different subjects, such as the prevention of violence in the home. They also have the right to psychological help offered by the centre.
In addition to help with homework and a refresher course with teachers for primary and secondary students, the CERPI provides a “ludoteca” for children aged 3 to 6. This “ludoteca” is used as a space for school support and fun and educational activities for all children. However, it also serves as a kindergarten for about fifteen children.
In Bolivia, children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism or Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity (ADHD) are not really integrated into the education system. The only help provided and organized by the government so that these children are educated is the presence of an inclusion teacher in the regular school at their side. However, it is not the government that pays these specialist teachers. It is the parents who have to pay them when they come with a certain price that most parents cannot afford. Thus, at the CERPI, these children are followed by a psychopedagogue, they thus benefit from educational and psychological support and the youngest among them are integrated into the “ludoteca”.
The project of the Center for Integral Pedagogical Resources is part of the projects of the “Instituto Politécnico Tómas Katari” (IPTK), or the Polytechnic Institute Tómas Katari. The IPTK is a Bolivian non-governmental non-profit organization founded in 1976 in Ocurí and currently based in Sucre and attached to the CERPI. This private organization, independent of the State, political parties, the Church, companies and foreign organizations, is a political and social instrument of the most disadvantaged peoples in search of the transformation and evolution of their situation. The IPTK seeks the liberation of these peoples and contributes to “Vivir Bien”, or “Live Well”, with the help of “Servicio”, “Solución” and “Cambio”. The “Service” is to meet the needs of people with a high poverty index in Bolivia. The “Solution” boils down to developing abilities to solve the people’s immediate problems. “Change”, on the other hand, is about transforming the more complex realities of poverty, discrimination, exclusion, oppression and violence.
Through professionalization, training, education, research and communication, the organization carries out various projects that aim to forge a constructive critical awareness through educational and communicative actions, which aim to contribute to the construction of an alternative development model to capitalism more in harmony with the “Madre Tierra”, which aim to promote relations of equity and equal opportunity between men and women and which also aim to provide the population with access to comprehensive health services to lead a dignified life.
A little more about the various educational projects of the IPTK…
The CERPI is not the only project of the Polytechnic Institute Tómas Katari applied to develop the education sector. Indeed, this NGO includes several projects that aim to deploy educational tools for disadvantaged populations in the Sucre area. The CERPI, a project aimed at reducing the gap in educational inequalities present in the peri-urban areas of Sucre, has existed for 46 years and is open every day of the week, in the morning from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and in the afternoon from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
At the same time, the IPTK has developed the CERPITOS, three smaller centers welcoming children in extreme poverty for 4 hours in the morning or afternoon outside school hours, in the suburban districts of the city of Sucre to provide them with educational support. The CERPITO of the district of Alto Florida has existed for 26 years while the other two CERPITOS of the districts of Cessa and San Antonio have existed for 6 years.
In addition, the IPTK has set up the “escuela móvil”, or mobile school, an alternative school support center for children and young street workers who have little or no schooling, children of 3 to 18 years old, from the four outlying areas of Sucre, namely the neighborhoods of Villa Alegría, Lajastambo, Bolivia and Villa Marlecita, which has existed for 15 years. One day per district, the mobile school travels and teaches these children literacy, mathematics, languages, fine motor skills, creative therapy, health education and the rights of children and adolescents, and this in a fun way.
In order to carry out all these educational projects, the administrative team, the educational, artistic and sports team as well as the multidisciplinary team, including a social worker, an educational manager and a psychologist, have 19 people in all. Among these 19 people, 15 of them work at the CERPI, 3 take care of the CERPITOS and 2 work on the mobile school project.
The IPTK needs your help…
The Tómas Katari Polytechnic Institute is independent and its various projects do not receive any financial aid from the State. The various projects of the IPTK are supported in an ephemeral way by different donors and rely on subsidies from the International Cooperation for Development. However, obtaining these grants is becoming more and more complicated because Bolivia is no longer on the list of priority countries. Also, in order to be able to continue to develop and evolve the various educational projects helping and providing tools for their future to many children in the peri-urban areas of Sucre, the organization needs funding. This is why IPTK is currently carrying out a fundraising campaign called “SEMBRANDO VALORES, COSECHANDO FUTURO”. This campaign, seeking individual donors from outside, aims to contribute to the comprehensive education of children and adolescents from the most vulnerable sectors of the city of Sucre.
A more detailed description of the “SEMBRANDO VALORES, COSECHANDO FUTURO” campaign is available at the following link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oK5EIZlFdPR2RTCDKxMQK2QdvnxOI3XQ.
You can find more information on the CERPI, the IPTK and the “SEMBRANDO VALORES, COSECHANDO FUTURO” campaign on the IPTK website (https://iptk.org.bo/) and on the Facebook pages of the IPTK (https://www.facebook.com/ONG.IPTK.BOLIVIA) and the CERPI (https://www.facebook.com/CERPI.IPTK/).
