Empowering Poor, Rural Girls in Paraguay

The Mbaracayu School continues to make its best efforts to continue providing education to female students from nearby communities.

The situation of the country has not changed much, the risk of spreading the virus and deaths remain high. Vaccinations have started but are not yet available for young people. In general, educational institutions have adapted, but distance classes are still difficult. The economy has improved a bit but a long recovery is expected.

We started the year with a mixed modality of face-to-face and virtual classes, the Mbaracayu school has been forced to suspend this methodology due to COVID infections among female students. Classes are held only remotely, taking care of the well-being of their students. Using different media and digital platforms, teachers continue their lesson plan. Carrying out follow-ups by Whatsapp and telephone consultations.

The School is expected to receive students again at the boarding school starting in August.

Given the consequences of the pandemic and the difficulties that virtual classes entail, donations were used in the previous period for the installation of a student management portal at the Mbaracayu School.

After the first stage of installation and especially the asociation to the portal, in conjunction with a general (face-to-face) training for the teachers, we continued to a second stage. In this period, two (virtual) trainings were carried out for teachers to reinforce and use the portal's functions, with the aim that teachers can correctly handle the portal and familiarize students with it. It also start the uploading personal and school information for each of the students.

Finally, once the installation and training stages are concluded, the beginning of the school year is expected to start with the use of the portal. This year the school applies the hybrid class system. This means that there will be both face-to-face and virtual classes.

The students will begin their return to class with a training on the functions of the student administration system.

The portal promotes the administration of student information and generates greater ease of contact between student / teacher.

The beneficiaries from this project are teachers (10) and all students (50) of the Mbaracayu School. The ages between 15 to 18 years old, and 32 to 58 years old.