Education

I have been curious from the beginning of the pandemic, when schools shut down around the world, how this would affect the overall learning of the students. I believe that it will take years of study at this point to know exactly what the impact of the different strategies to deal with the virus really has been on the education systems of the world.

Now that I have been back in Peru for a few of weeks and have been able to talk to some people about what the situation in education really is, I must say that my heart breaks for all of the students that have been 'studying' the last two years. In the entire country, there have been no 'in person' classes since the end of 2019. Since their school year runs from March to December, many of the schools hadn't even started going back to classes when everything got shut down in 2020. Schools at every level made every effort to do virtual school, but if you know anything about the internet in much of the country you know this was not really a solution.

I read on a news site that I follow the other day that it is estimated that, in the region of Loreto alone, 12,000 primary and secondary students have simply stopped any kind of education. The article was encouraging schools and teachers to go and find these students to get them registered for the next school year. And that doesn't even count the students that have been 'registered' and 'studying' that are in such impoverished areas that they are really not receiving any education at all.

In the time that I have been working in Iquitos since 2015, I have known so many wonderful students that truly had a desire to learn. Even then, everything seemed stacked against most of those kids to pursue an education as they desired. Now, the situation almost seems so daunting that it would be impossible to recover from and make headway on helping those with a desire to learn. But... I believe that if I can help even one student pursue their dream of an education or one teacher become better equipped to serve their students in the situation they are in, then my efforts will not have been in vain. Sometimes, helping one person cascades into helping so many more than we can really fathom.

So, even though it seems like an impossible task, I will continue to pursue my passion of helping students and teachers of the Loreto region of Peru in any way I can.

What is your passion?