Today we went adventuring to the suburb of Manchay. Don’t misunderstand, this is not a suburb like Oakville is a suburb. This is a suburb like it’s-too-expensive-to-live-in-the-city-where-there’s-electricity-and-running-water. But, it was really awesome!
So cute!
We work with a school there called Jose Carlos Mariategui, which has the most adorable children ever! But the school is not structurally very good. They have about 7 classrooms, three of which we built on a previous group project, and they have 1000 students. Their infrastructure is so lacking that they have to do school in two shifts: primary school from 7:45-12:30, and secondary school from 1:00-6:00.
This is the school. The classrooms on the left are the ones that we built.
We have two placements there, one to teach English because at present they can only afford an English teacher for the afternoons, so kids don’t start learning English until grade 9. The other placement is a group building project, they are trying to build TWENTY-TWO new classrooms! We have a group of 25 people coming in February and we might send them to Jose Carlos to help out.
Adventures in Peruvia 
[…] was filmed in Manchay, a poor shantytown on the outskirts of Lima. Incidentally, this is where Jose Carlos Mariategui School is, one of the poor schools that we send volunteers to. I also learned that about 3,000 people […]
By: Manchay « Adventures in Peruvia on February 13, 2010
at 6:50 pm