Ecuador haughty and proudly celebrates 200 years of liberation from the Spanish colony. «We are free» has been read and heard for 2 centuries, since then it has been in the hands of different governments to ensure that Ecuador reaches the living standards of other nations, managing our growth autonomously depended a lot on the vision of a few authorities of that time. It was and is clear that to emerge as a new nation we needed a population educated in the principles and values of a mostly white-mestizo culture, thus making education a privilege of the economic elites and leaving many aside.
Two centuries later, education became a right in almost all the nations of the planet, many normative contexts have been elaborated on this right on a global scale (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO Convention 169, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, etc). At the national level, Ecuador has an advanced constitution that guarantees the right to education for all children without distinction of class or ethnic origin. Despite the time that has passed and the development of tools and regulations to ensure that all citizens of Ecuador have access to a high quality education, the gap between the poor and the rich, between the mestizo and indigenous/Afro-Ecuadorian/peasant population is enormous. It is enough to review the statistics of government organizations and reports from multilateral organizations to understand that access to education by minority populations is deficient.
In addition to this, access to quality education in the Amazonian region of Ecuador is complicated. In a region made up of natural areas of importance to the country and the world, in hundreds of communities coming from 11 Indigenous nationalities, the majority of settlements do not have proper educational infrastructure, nor do they have quality-trained teachers, even less do they have educational materials. Here we talk only about initial, elementary and basic training schools. The statistics drop significantly if we take into account the figures on the number of middle and high school establishments. Thus we see that there are very few students from Indigenous nationalities of the Amazon who can access and graduate at the university level.
Along with the independence anniversary, we are experiencing the effect of a global pandemic that reached all corners of the planet, which has affected and killed many people, and revealed a reality that not even the greatest intentions and agreements on access to education could foresee; all humanity had to stay on pause, not go out. In these conditions access to education was guaranteed, in these technological times, through the internet connection. Thank god! But this works only for urban populations and probably some living in rural places. The Indigenous communities of the Amazon do not have basic services, and much less in terms of Internet connections, which once again widens the gap in access to education.
Despite the difficult situation with respect to education and beyond just enunciating and complaining about this reality, I want to highlight 2 efforts that are carried out in the Ecuadorian Amazon to guarantee access to education, one has to do with with the Equitable Origin Foundation, an organization that works with the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and that in a joint effort with Inveneo and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon CONFENIAE, are developing a project to provide Internet services to Amazonian communities of the Shuar Nationality in the province of Zamora Chinchipe, collaborating to try to reduce the gap in access to Internet connection and communication as a way to guarantee access to good education for Amazonian Indigenous communities.
There is also a very interesting program called Beyond Lagartococha, which is run under the umbrella of Fundación Raíz-Ecuador, our sister organization in Ecuador, and is directed and organized by a group of students from private schools in Quito. They, aware of the reality and the shortcomings that the Siekopai communities of Peru have in order to have an educational infrastructure, trained teachers and pedagogical materials, have been organizing for some years to hold student parties, fairs, garage sales, contests, etc., in order to raise funds. This initiative has been very successful in these activities, the funds raised were used in the construction of 2 educational centers in the communities of Mañoko and Paiquenapë located in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon jungle and bordering the Ecuadorian Amazon. During the 5 years that the project has lasted, the funds have also been used to hire 2 Siekopai teachers, who have received a monthly salary and training, and will soon obtain the title of specialist teacher in bilingual intercultural education. At the same time, this initiative addresses some aspects of community health and is beginning to support cultural strengthening activities.
This initiative shows us all that by leaving our comfort zone aside and expanding our hearts, we can cross borders and significantly help those who need it. For now, these distant communities can live in harmony, their culture will not fade, and new generations will be able to proactively confront a global, mercantile and connected world that is already in these once indomitable and distant places.