Current Projects
Primary Colours
The biggest educational hurdle faced by Nicaraguan children is Grade 1. Many students don’t get through their fist year of schooling and close to 50% of them never make it to Grade 6. It’s not hard to imagine – school isn’t fun and more importantly, it doesn’t give the children the skills they children need to succeed. But if school is both fun and relevant, the children will stay. And learn.
So, Pueblito has teamed up with FUNARTE (The Foundation for Creative Children’s Art) to make sure that the children of Esteli are given a chance to learn right from the start.
FUNARTE is changing the face of public school in Nicaragua by introducing a highly innovative, art-based approach to Grade 1 and 2 classrooms. Almost 6,000 people including teachers, school counselors, parents and children from 12 public primary schools in Esteli are benefiting directly from this initiative.
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Primary Colours is a 3 year project that runs through to the end of 2011. Pueblito gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for this project.
Preschool Lunch Program
A 2008 study by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education demonstrates that 27% of all students in public school in Nicaragua suffer from chronic malnutrition and that 25% of Nicaraguan preschool students suffer from anemia (iron deficiency). For a young child, anemia has severe developmental consequences.
In response, Pueblito has developed the Preschool Lunch Program to meet the nutritional needs of preschool-aged children who live in Managua’s poor, urban neighbourhoods and attend what are called “community preschools” (kindergartens organized by the community – since there are few state-funded kindergartens – and staffed with volunteer teachers).
The Preschool Lunch Program provides community preschools with funds for food staples for the 10-month school year (February - November). Local mothers then use the food to prepare hot lunches 5 days a week for the students.
In 2009, about 350 children, aged 3 to 5, benefited directly and simple blood tests proved that the instance of anemia was greatly reduced. The Program will benefit a similar number of children in 2010, meaning that over 300 families are raising healthier children.
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Past Nicaraguan Projects
¡ArtWorks2! trained 33 rural community preschool teachers to use an new approach to the classroom environment, based primarily on art, which has all the necessary elements to encourage a child’s development despite the impoverished setting.
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Past Programs
Pueblito Canada has 35 years experience implementing community development projects that benefit children in Latin America. We have worked in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Mexico.
Brazil
Pueblito Canada worked with the Movement for the Promotion of Child Care Centres (MLPC) for almost 20 years to improve the conditions at child care centres in the city of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais). Through MLPC, Pueblito Canada was reaching over 15,000 children under the age of six in the poor neighbourhoods of that city. MLPC has been a leader early child care in Brazil for over 25 years and has successfully intervened with the Brazilian federal government to shape new policies for Early Childhood Development (ECD) on several occasions. Some of the projects included the Art and Education Project and Through the Eyes of Children. Both projects provided training in ECD to pedagogic coordinators and educators in the child care centres using a train-the-trainer approach facilitated by experts from Ryerson University, Toronto, the third partner in that relationship from 2000-2003.
Costa-Rica
Pueblito Canada began in 1974 with the vision and leadership of Peter Taçon, our founder. Peter and many friends set out to improve the lives of the vulnerable and neglected street children in Costa Rica. Together with a group of Costa Ricans, they founded a Children's Village as an alternative to government orphanages. Costa Rican couples were selected as foster parents and lived with the children in the "Pueblito", Spanish for "village". The villages became fully funded by the Costa Rican government in the late 1980s and Pueblito moved on to concentrate on the projects that were developing in the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Mexico. Many original volunteers continue to support Pueblito today inspired by the vision and energy of the original project.
Dominican Republic
Following the devastation of Hurricane David, Pueblito replicated the children’s village model in the Dominican Republic. It was there that we gained experience providing a wide variety of development programs for children in poor communities and their parents.
Mexico
In 1995 in Mexico City, Pueblito Canada and Cirque du Soleil, in conjunction with CEJUV, the local counterpart, launched the Machincuepa Circus. The program targeted youth at risk, specifically those young people living on the streets in the fringe communities of Mexico City. The program provided the young people with the opportunity to get educated and to grow, using the practice of circus arts to create a sense of identity, build self esteem and rebuild their relationship with their community and society in general
