Due to Covid-19, Horizontes Program adapts materials so that students develop Technical Training in their homes or farms
The quarantine by Covid-19 has impacted the education of 9.9 million Peruvian students as face-to-face classes in schools have been suspended. In order to adapt to the current situation and so that education does not stop, UNESCO Peru's Horizontes program has been implementing the Technical Training in organic agriculture for secondary school students.
Thanks to this technical training, young people from rural schools in Amazonas, Ayacucho, Cusco and Piura, will learn to grow vegetables in their homes and farms. At the end of the year, students who finish high school will receive a double certification diploma.
The Horizontes Program contributes so that adolescents from the public secondary schools in rural areas can implement their life projects and dedicate themselves to activities linked to the development of their communities inside or outside their locality without losing their identity.
In this context, the Program seeks that adolescents finish their high school studies developing a set of socio-emotional and intercultural skills, obtaining at the same time a technical training.
Horizontes is working in 20 secondary schools in rural districts of the Amazonas, Cusco, Ayacucho and Piura regions, with approximately 270 teachers and 3,400 students.
During 2019, 7 of the 20 schools offered technical training in 8 specialties. This year, in the framework of the pandemic COVID-19 and taking advantage of the fact that all the students are at home, the program have adapted its offer so that they can take the Technical Training from home.
The main technical offer for this year is the cultivation of vegetables in an orchard. this is because in rural areas all students have an orchard, a farm, and larger areas in their own homes.
“This training can be managed remotely and even with the family. Furthermore, this practice becomes an important livelihood in these times of economic recession. The Horizontes program is adapting its curriculum in a remote version, through audios, building texts so that the children can work from home, with their parents, and with the advice of the teacher”, says Alex Ríos, education specialist at UNESCO Peru.
At the end of the year the Horizontes program hopes to achieve its second promotion of graduates from fifth grade of high school with double certification. Students will receive certificates at the modular level that will prove that they have finished their secondary and technical occupation management in Organic Agriculture.