Schools Supported

Escuela Basica No 2727 Asunción Paraguay

In November 1999, Caroline and I visited Asunción in Paraguay. We were backpacking and we discovered a launderette run by a couple who have now become very good friends. During our second visit we realised that their son was keen to learn English so we started paying for lessons as they were not available in the state school that he went to. Later we found out that he was then teaching one of his cousins so we enrolled him as well. Now we have three children studying English and one computing.

The mother of one of the cousins is a director of the school named above and we were lucky enough, if you could call it that, to visit the school the last time we visited our friends. The building was not designed as a school but has been adapted, very badly in our opinion.

The building is surrounded by a very large market, Mercado Municipal No.4 de Asunción where a sea of plastic coloured sheets covers uncountable stalls selling everything that you can imagine. The building was originally intended as a market but none of the traders, so the story is told wanted to be on anything but the ground floor as they didn't believe that any of the public would venture past it. So the sea of stalls continues outside.

Inside on the ground floor some traders have set up. And some have set up on the ramps that lead to the first floor, originally designed to take vehicles. This one set of ramps is the only way in and out of the building. On the first floor is a canteen area, many small food stalls or cafes all side by side and vying for the same business. The next floor up there is some form of municipality office and a medical centre for paediatrics, gynaecology and dentistry.

So we come to the third floor and when we got there it had been raining heavily. A lot of the high above the floor slatted windows were broken so water had poured in and was covering both the ramp leading to the third floor school and the classrooms themselves. The play area which is the space between the classes in the centre of the floor was flooded indicating that water was coming in through the ceiling too. From the photographs you can see how bad it is.

There you have it, the third floor of an unsuitable building housing 300 children, one female and one male toilet and no fire escape. It does fill a person with despair when you see a school like this but we were very fortunate to meet some of the young children going to the school because above all, they were keen to learn despite the conditions that we found. Many of the children have one or more parents working in the market so this is an ideal location for them.

What we hope to do is to raise money through the sale of our pictures and our stories to help fund better resources for this school. The director receives only 1$ per child per year from the government. By the way, the two floors above the school, the 4th and 5th have been abandoned!