Providing Education for Young Indigenous Peruvians

In October, 251 Amazonian young people and 24 teachers came together in the remote riverside community of Santa Clotilde to participate in Amantani’s Pathways Programme. The programme provides workshops on personal development and vocational and academic orientation to young people in their final two years of secondary school.

Our Pathways Programme is an important first step in supporting young people emotionally, academically, psychologically and financially, so that they are able to access and complete their studies.

Our Project Director, Thilo, shares, “this programme contributes to the development of more resilient young people, who are confident in themselves and prepared to confront the challenges that the future holds. Our commitment to the students’ emotional and holistic wellbeing is a crucial step in the construction of a more inclusive and meaningful education.”

Over a series of 30 workshops, the Amantani team, Thilo, Edu and Shirley, engaged young people through games, art, theatre and play. The common thread of these activities linked individual choices with collective change, such as in the environment workshop, which aimed to raise awareness about local actions to protect our shared home on Earth. As members of native Amazonian communities, the young people’s voices and perspectives were heard about personal and community actions that are being taken to slow down climate change and become guardians of the forest.

The workshops emphasised the impressive resilience of local communities in the Amazon, encouraging appreciation for the many stories and historic examples of resilience from the young people’s own homes and villages. For these 251 young people in a crucial stage of their lives, Amantani provides a unique and important space for them to reflect on their own identity and place in the world, aware of the challenges but positive about the changes they can make – personally, locally and globally.

To learn more about the young people we work with and the Amazonian River Napo communities where they come from, stay tuned for our new project video, which will be published very soon!