A chance at higher education for Kichwa children

Guadalupe Ramirez and Ben Blevins, directors of the Highland Support Project, visited Guamote, Ecuador, during the first part of March. The purpose of the visit was to formalize planning with Dr. Luis Alberto Tuaza Castro, professor at the National University of Chimborazo, to formalize the planning for an Indigenous University to serve the ninety-eight percent of young adults not served by higher education.

The Institute's purpose is to provide relevant education and training, enabling Indigenous young adults to stay on their land, in their community, and with their culture. The current system of higher education does not focus on the relevant skills, opportunities, or values of the region.

In Ecuador's highly stratified and unequal society, Indigenous youth face many obstacles from obtaining higher education. One significant issue is the inappropriate qualifications required for admission to the University. For example, a portion of the entrance exam is English proficiency, while there is limited English instruction provided in Indigenous regions. Furthermore, entrance exams developed in Chile and adopted for an urban population are not culturally appropriate for Highland communities.

The vision of the Institute is to provide quality education and training for the majority of youth that otherwise would not have an opportunity for the development of critical thinking skills, culturally relevant intellectual development, and practical skills to be productive contributors in their communities.

A significant issue with the current education model is that the skills and world view are not appropriate for the realities of rural communities. To fully utilize the education, students typically have to move to a city or immigrate to the United States. Rather than educating students to improve their communities, students are trained for jobs that do not exist or norms of behavior that make them aliens in the lands of their ancestors.

Currently, Dr. Luis Alberto Tuaza Castro has organized colleagues from Universities to provide weekend classes for young adults that do not qualify for the Univesity. The objective is to provide services to the majority of students that would never be able to attend a Western education institution and provide them with directed education that enables them to live well in the place where they choose.

This pivoting of our programming focus represents a listening process with community leaders concerning their real goals and objectives for their communities. The foundational questions concern the value of an education and world view that forces young people to reject their culture and their community to obtain a life whose value requires a radical change in world view.

Over the next few months, we will be developing the logical framework and sustainability model to provide education in community health, popular education, Indigenous world view, construction, practical engineering, entrepreneurship, and civics.

We thank you for your support as we continue to innovate and invest in transformational programming to break cycles of dependency and marginalization.

Beloved donors, 

My name is Vania and I have joined the Highland Support Project staff to take on Project Management and Outreach Coordinator roles for Ecuador. I am excited to take on these roles and keep updating all of you as we continue to make progress!

You, our selfless donors, have supported us in our efforts to teach English to children in Ecuador and I’d like to update you on some recent changes. In order to advance education efforts, we focused on attaining work visas for English teachers but unfortunately, the visas were denied by the Ecuadorian government. This means that our current project was not feasible and, regrettably, our work and report update was delayed because of this issue. We deeply apologize for the delay and will assure you are receiving current information going forward.

HSP is excited to announce that we will be shifting our focus towards a new opportunity: water accessibility projects in Chismaute, Ecuador! The water project will focus on irrigation systems to further HSPs mission of healing through food and community-based empowerment.

To offer a little background on this project, Chismaute, Ecuador is a hilltop community that was a result of the ‘encomienda system’ where native people were forced into labor by colonists. The last encomienda was not broken up until the late 1990s in Ecuador and when it was, workers were finally given land of their own. Unfortunately, this land was on mountain tops that didn’t have proper irrigation. As a result, they were unable to grow food and couldn’t feed themselves or their families.

Fortunately, the community is situated between 3 peaks that funnel water year-round into a high-volume river system and serves as a steady water reserve. The community has a water pump but needs to run piping to the mountain to establish an irrigation system for agricultural pursuits. This will make it possible for families to thrive on the land and not worry about food insecurity and give the 1,200 community members a chance at escaping poverty.

Once again, we cannot thank you enough for supporting our project and making it possible for us to keep empowering these communities.

Thank you for your unwavering support,

Highland Support Project