Educacion by the Numbers

We know that Ecuador is different from the U.S.  But every once in a while when we’re taking notes during a Fe y Alegria meeting or observing in a classroom, a few numbers shock us, despite their context:
$280 – average cost per year to educate a student for FyA Ecuador
$224 – average monthly FyA teacher [...]

La Bramadora – bugs, bananas, and a school in the jungle

We got off the bus from Quito in a dusty supply town called El Carmen.  The first thing to hit us was the heat – a palpable, equatorial wave that announced our arrival in the subtropical basin of Ecuador’s Manabi province.  We hefted our duffel bags past street vendors hawking coconuts and flapping roosters, and [...]

Imanalla manta Jahuapamba! (Hello from Jahuapamba!)

For reference, Jahuapamba is pronounced sort of like Cawabunga (Hawabamba).  It is a tiny indigenous town just north of Otavalo (2 ½ hours north of Quito), and the site of our second Fe y Alegría school visit.  While, like Cuenca, it’s at high elevation – about 9,000 feet surrounded by 16,000 foot [...]

Cuenca Part 2 – We Go to School / Things Get Interesting

During our six months in Quito, we accumulated enough cultural knowledge to realize that if we visited a school and started cross-examining the principal and faculty right away, the only answers we’d get would be along the lines of “oh yes, everything’s fine, thank you, everything’s going well.” People are much less direct here than [...]

Cuenca, Part I – First Impressions and the City Itself

As some readers may remember, Matt and I long ago promised to do school visits as part of our year in Ecuador. Language difficulties, side projects, bureaucracy, vacations, family visits, inertia, and the Ecuadorian conception of time all delayed the start of that plan. But in February we finally completed our first school [...]

Schools on the Coast! – A Post Long Overdue

After two months in Quito interviewing members of Fe y Alegría’s national office, Jen and I were getting stir crazy, and it became increasingly clear that we needed to see some schools. Fe y Alegría Ecuador subdivides its work into four semi-autonomous regions, and as we’d already spent time in Quito and in the Sierra [...]

Three Hours and a Million Miles Away

(A Trip to Ecuador’s Rural Northwest)
To see photos from the trip, visit www.picasaweb.google.com/jvorse.
Last week I (Jen) had the privilege of accompanying Fundación Esquel’s education coordinator, Alejandra, on a three day trip to the rural northwest region of Ecuador (the Noroccidente) to coordinate trainings for teachers at unidocente (one teacher) schools.  As we drove north the [...]

Why Are We Here?

Good question, and one with both professional and personal answers.
Officially, Jen and I will be in Ecuador from August 2008 through June 2009 thanks to a Fulbright grant I received to research public education. We will work jointly to study “Fe y Alegría” (Faith and Joy) – a public school system run by the [...]