Public School Uruguay, Program for child laborers
The Argentine depression has caused a explosion of the number of kids working on the streets of Santa Fe, a small city in the pampas. Several teachers at a public school have developed a program to keep these children in school, and to provide them with other options. They use music and invididualized attention to improve the kids’ self esteem, their performance in school, and to imporve family relations.
The program began as tutoring for poor kids, but the teachers soon learned that the problem was really not about poverty, but about work. The kids were on the street, selling candy, begging, or cleaning windshields until late at night, and could never do their homework. Then, a student at the school died on the job, forcing the school administration to pay attention.
Some 30% of students in the elementary school work. All come from a favela close to the school, where their parents, almost always unemployed, send their kids into the street to earn money for the family.
The program runs workshops on children’s rights, body awareness, and music. It emphasizes play, because the teachers have seen that tired and wasted parents have no energy to play with their kids. With the older children, the workshops include conversation about work, but with younger kids, it’s all fun. With all age groups, the teachers try to deconstruct the hierarchies of the street, where those who sell sweets have more prestige than beggers or recyclers. Trash sorters (cilujas) are taboo, even among other street kids, so work with them demands special attention.
There are drugs in the favela where the kids live, but not much. “The less drugs, the less money, that’s the rule around here. It’s poorer than you can imagine,” one teacher told me.
María Crisalle
Escuela Uruguay
López y Planes con Frey Cayetano Rodríguez
Santa Fe, Argentina
crisalle@fbcb.unl.edu.ar
