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Bolivia

FODEI

Organisation: FODEI (Fomento al Desarrollo Infantil)
Address: Calle Campos Nº 367, Edificio Artemis PB, Of. 10. La Paz, Bolivia
Tel: +591 2 431438
Fax: +591 2 431438
E-mail: fodei@caoba.entelne t.bo
Website: www.fodei-bo.ch
Contact: Patricia Velasco Jordán

The project reports the following from Autumn 2004:

Activities

Our Child-to-Child activities began in March 1998 with a pilot project in a Catholic institution (Fe y Alegria) in the city of El Alto. 3 facilitators and 15 children, aged between 10 and 12 years old, were involved and were trained to promote pre-school education. This project was aimed at reaching older brothers and sisters, who usually are responsible for taking care of the younger members of their families. Currently, the activities are implemented through a group of state schools located in the marginalised areas in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. Our Swiss partner, ASFODEI, the Duchemin Foundation, also from Switzerland, and the Bolivian NGO, THAIPAMU provided funding for our Child-to-Child activities from 1999 to 2003. The project works with the Ministry (Department) of Education, with whom there is a signed agreement relating to technical cooperation within the framework of Educational Reform.

Children and Adult Personnel Involved

Participating children are drawn from the urban marginalised areas of La Paz and El Alto. 869 older brothers and sisters (10-15 years old) and 3060 pre-school children (4-5 years old) are involved. 7 facilitators are also involved, each one taking care of 5 schools. Most of the children are from the Aymara culture. Both boys and girls are included in the project. Although the children are from marginalised areas and low-income families, they do not live in extreme conditions, i.e. they do have some kind of family structure and are attending school. The adult workers (facilitators) are women. Every school that carries out Child-to-Child activities designates a teacher to be trained by our facilitators. This teacher will continue to coordinate the activities in the school when the project finishes after two years. From 2004 the project has had a male facilitator who belongs to the project ‘Proyecto de Vida’ with whom we are coordinating the execution of the Hermanos Mayores project.

Main Purpose of the Child-to-Child Activities

Our overall aims are:
1. To diminish the psycho and social vulnerability of children under 6 years
of age in disadvantaged and marginalised areas.
2. To improve the children's preparation for entry into the school system.

These aims are related to gender, health and sexuality, democracy and environment issues taught across the curriculum in the Bolivian school programme.

Activities and methodology

The programme reports:

Child-to-Child activities take place in the pre-school environment. Older brothers and sisters have activities in a pre-school nearby, or in their own school if there is a pre-school section.

There are 3 ways in which activities are introduced, depending on the agreement made between the facilitator and the school principal:

1. Older brothers and sisters (school with morning shift) attend during their free time (afternoon) at the pre-school that has an afternoon shift, or vice versa.
2. Older brothers and sisters can devote two hours per week of their school time to Child-to-Child activities.
3. Older brothers and sisters can carry out Child-to-Child activities during the free lesson hours they have in their school schedule.
4. Older brothers and sisters are encouraged to think and make their own decisions about pre-school education, child development and health issues and actions.

We have not yet reached a high level of participation in this sense, but we have some interesting experiences.

The method we use has 3 steps:
1. To propose a problem (facilitator);
2. To develop interest to discuss the problem (facilitator and children);
3. To propose solutions to the problem (children).

Another way is to reflect on the messages they get or some topics they are discussing from the magazine 'Nuestro Chiqui'. Both ways generate new messages and activities. A three-step methodology is used to carry out activities:

1. Preparation (facilitator with her group work with children for one hour on pre-school or child development topics and prepare material for the activities);
2. Execution (brothers and sisters take part in activities with pre-school children for one hour);
3. Evaluation (facilitator with her group evaluate the activities for one hour).

In carrying out activities, we aim to generate in older brothers and sisters the following competencies:

1. Skills related to the individual and personal growth of every older brother and sister communicating and behaving skills, self-confidence, cooperative work, etc), which improves, on the one hand, the results they obtain in school, and on the other, their relationships with their families.
2. Skills related to pre-school education and child development issues, so that the older brothers and sisters are better prepared to take care of younger children.

This project has a final aim: to prevent these children (older brothers and sisters) from repeating the mistakes experienced by their families, e.g. attitudes such as child neglect, early father or motherhood, family violence, etc. It also helps to prepare them to raise their own children in a better way when they become parents. Our activities are school-based even though they are not yet part of the state school programme. However, the Department of Education have expressed interest in the experience and are thinking about including it in the school programme in the future. Currently, 35 schools are involved, including 87 pre-school classes.

Community and Parental Involvement in Child-to-Child Activities

Parents and community are not directly involved in Child-to-Child activities, but they do come to meetings. Parents tend to take an active interest in their children's Child-to-Child activities and help to gather recycled material for the activities.

Monitoring and Evaluation of Child-to-Child Activities

We do have a system to evaluate our activities:

1. Once a week we have meetings with the facilitators’ team. They report achievements and difficulties, propose solutions, make adjustments, etc. These meetings are documented.
2. We visit schools when they request.
3. We have video-filmed the experience showing the whole process.
4. We apply two questionnaires to older brothers and sisters, one at the beginning of the process and one at the end. We then compare the results. The questions refer to their knowledge of the young children, what they think they
   might be able to do, and how they see themselves and their personal growth.

As a result of the programme, we have noted the following changes:

• Older brothers and sisters:
  • have developed more self-confidence;
  • reaffirmed their identities and their self-esteem;
  • can communicate more effectively;
  • get better results in their studies;
  • behave more appropriately;
  • have learned to understand, talk with, listen to and play with preschoolpre-school children;
  • have developed creative skills.
• Pre-school children:
  • can relate more easily to other people;
  • are more curious: they ask and propose things;
  • have learned to work in a free surrounding.

The number of schools requesting that they be allowed to participate in the project has increased from 1 in the first year to 35 in the third year. The teachers have become more aware of the different ways in which they can work with children. In the community, the older brothers’ and sisters’ relationships with their parents, and with other brothers and sisters, have changed. They have also begun to change attitudes in their families.

Date: 2005
Source: FODEI