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Expanding Educational Horizons in Ecuador: A Beacon of Hope

Embracing the Future with Open Arms

There’s a palpable excitement in the air as we embark on a transformative journey, expanding our educational reach in Ecuador. After years of refining our approach to maximize efficiency and impact, we’re thrilled to announce potential partnerships with four additional schools, including the promising Santa Teresa School. This opportunity marks a pivotal moment in our quest to make quality education accessible to more children.

Collaboration at the Heart of Change

Our initial meetings with Santa Teresa’s dedicated directors were nothing short of inspiring. Together, we discussed the importance of a culturally attuned English program and shared the lessons learned from past collaborations. The commitment from Santa Teresa to overcome bureaucratic challenges and work closely with us in developing this program reaffirms our belief in the power of partnership. Their assurance of a united community, ready to mobilize over 100 families in support, signals a new chapter of collective effort and shared success.

A Strategic Approach to Sustainable Impact

Mindful of our history and driven by our vision for the future, we’re proceeding with thoughtful caution. Starting with basic contributions like paint and brushes, we aim to witness the community’s commitment firsthand. This step-by-step approach allows us to slowly introduce more resources, monitoring engagement and impact, ensuring that our efforts lead to lasting change.

To ensure the effectiveness of our resources, we’re also introducing contracts for students and parents, a testament to our mutual commitment to educational excellence. This initiative aims to foster a sense of responsibility and ensure active participation in our programs.

Join Us on This Remarkable Journey

This expansion is more than just a milestone; it’s a testament to what we can achieve together. By joining forces with communities like Santa Teresa, we’re not just expanding our reach—we’re building a future where every child has the opportunity to thrive through education.

Your support is crucial to turning this vision into reality. Together, we can overcome challenges and make a lasting difference in the lives of children and communities across Ecuador.

Thank you for your unwavering support and belief in our mission. Let’s continue to transform lives, one student, one school, one community at a time.

Warmest regards,
President of CNS
Carlos Penaranda

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Transforming Education in Ecuador: Our Journey Amidst Adversity

Transforming Education in Ecuador: Our Journey Amidst Adversity

In February, amidst the backdrop of a country striving for order, I embarked on a pivotal journey to Ecuador. Our mission was to evaluate the impact of societal challenges on our educational initiative and strategize our alignment with our ambitious goals. This visit revealed a situation fraught with both challenges and opportunities. Recent events have led to a significant reduction in school attendance, with student numbers dropping from 25 to as few as 8 in some institutions. Despite these setbacks, our longstanding commitment to the community has begun to pay off, with high-capacity schools seeking to join our transformative project.

Navigating Challenges with Strategic Solutions

Faced with the question of resource allocation in small versus large schools, we delved deep into our core values. Drawing from principles learned in the military, the concept of leaving no one behind guided our approach. Through collaborative stakeholder meetings, we established a sustainable model: maintaining schools with a minimum of 15 students. This decision reflects our dedication to every student’s educational journey, ensuring schools with lesser attendance continue operating until every current student graduates. This commitment underlines our belief in rewarding hard work and perseverance.

Engaging the Community for a Sustainable Future

In addition to strategic planning, we are engaging with parents and the wider community through monthly events aimed at fostering unity and showcasing the project’s potential as a self-sustaining model. These initiatives are crucial for building a strong, interconnected community that supports educational advancement.

A Call to Action: Support Our Mission

This journey, while challenging, is a testament to the power of resilience and collective effort. Our vision for expanding educational opportunities across Ecuador is bold, yet within reach, thanks to the generous support of our donors and the unwavering spirit of our communities.

We invite you to join us in this exciting endeavor. Your support is not just an investment in our non-profit but a beacon of hope for countless students in Ecuador. Together, we can overcome obstacles and transform education for a brighter future.

Thank You for Believing in Our Cause

Your belief in our mission fuels our determination and makes all the difference. Thank you for standing with us.

With deepest appreciation,
Carlos Penaranda

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First Expansion

As we embarked on the journey of increasing the scope and domain of our project, we proudly opened a new school serving over 200 students in the mountainous regions of Ecuador. Although we are still in the early stages of increasing the scale of our non-profit, we are taking determined strides in the right direction. To bolster our efforts, we’ve appointed a dedicated individual to focus on grants and applications, which serves to expand our pool of funding. We’ve also amplified our presence on social media, which has already begun to open up additional funding opportunities for us. This support is crucial until our grant initiatives fully materialize.

Additionally, we understand the value of diverse funding sources in sustaining our growth and are actively seeking corporate sponsorship. We embrace the philosophy that “perfection is the enemy of progress” and thus we are not waiting for flawless conditions to arise before we advance in our mission. Starting next month, we will begin evaluating our students. This is a critical step in refining our educational approach and moving towards our goal, which is ambitious yet attainable: to equip our students with a level of English proficiency and education that paves their way to studying at universities in the United States and equips them with the skills they need to succeed.

In the interim, as we fine-tune our plan, we are launching after-school clubs conducted entirely in English. These clubs provide valuable language immersion for our students and will also allow us to test and develop our educational model further through a hands-on approach. This approach affords us the necessary time to address upcoming changes and gather the essential support and funding that we need.
We’re extremely optimistic about this journey. With each step we take, we come closer to realizing our vision of providing transformative education and opening up new horizons for our students in Ecuador.

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Challenges & Solutions:

As we progressed with our first and second schools, we noticed an unfortunate trend of declining student numbers. Initially, we suspected that a lack of incentives was the cause. We introduced prizes for outstanding performance, but this approach admittedly proved to be a bit off the mark. While high-achieving students remained engaged, those who were already struggling felt further alienated and their attendance continued to drop. To address this issue, we shifted our strategy to a system of offering our students smaller, more frequent rewards with a significant prize every six months for each school’s top performer.

The second challenge we faced was lower participation rates amongst our students, which we believed could be linked to the high crime rates in the area of one of the schools. Through observation, we discovered that the issue was not solely based on the crime. We found that it was also due to the value, or lack thereof, placed on education in this area. In one school, a parent-driven initiative was launched in which a nominal fee was introduced. This small investment led to a greater sense of ownership and commitment to education amongst our students and their parents. We are still in the process of formulating a solution for the other school which features a different demographic.

A significant barrier in both schools is the perceived irrelevance of learning English, particularly among parents with limited education. They struggle to envision future job opportunities for their children which require proficiency in English. To tackle this, we’ve initiated motivational meetings. By drawing on Geert Hofstede’s 6-Dimension model, these meetings aim to display the influence of power distance on behavior and allow us to show parents the tangible benefits of English proficiency for their children’s futures.

Lastly, we have worked to address the issue of students skipping school to work for their meals. We initially provided them with snacks from a local manufacturer, which showed promising results at first but ultimately didn’t help sustain long-term attendance. Recognizing that food insecurity was not the primary factor at play here, our focus has shifted towards engaging parents more actively in their children’s education. We believe that as the first cohort of students securing jobs through their acquired English skills, the need for these additional motivational strategies will gradually diminish over time.

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Introduction

Our journey began in an unexpected place: Pedernales, Ecuador. This is a place which I had never visited, but one that immediately captured my attention following the devastating earthquake that ravaged the region in 2016. This event, which is detailed on our homepage, spurred my first visit to the area in 2017. As a civil engineer, I had initially planned on using my expertise to teach locals how to build earthquake-resistant structures using new materials. However, it soon became evident to me that the challenges extended far beyond just infrastructure. The people of Ecuador were experiencing prevalent and deep-rooted cultural and educational gaps which I felt needed to be addressed. 

In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic altered the landscape of our work, making it impossible to continue our for-profit service. Yet, despite the adversity experienced during the pandemic, the drive to make a difference never waned. We revisited our earlier project and analyzed its shortcomings to learn from them and improve our plan. It became clear that without addressing the educational and cultural issues in Ecuador, our goals would be unattainable.

Inspired by successful models employed by other nations, we recognized the universal importance of an understanding of the English language as a stepping stone towards broader opportunities. Despite not yet having a clear roadmap developed, we urgently embarked on building our first school focused on teaching English—an essential skill for the future of students in Ecuador. This project quickly evolved into a comprehensive educational plan. We enhanced our plan by drawing on lessons from countries like Israel and Singapore where education is aligned with future job trends. In Ecuador, where large manufacturing corporations are scarce, we turned our focus towards computer science. Affordable laptops and the flexibility of location-independent work made this an ideal choice for us. English, therefore, became a prerequisite for our students to harvest the vast resources within the field of computer science.

Moreover, we identified a growing and worrying trend of debt accruement in both developed and developing nations. To prepare our students for a stable future and equip them with financial literacy skills, we incorporated basic finance education into our curriculum, utilizing board games as a practical teaching tool.

As we expanded our reach by opening a second school, we delved deeper into understanding Ecuador’s rich and diverse cultural landscape to enhance our teaching effectiveness. The realization dawned on us that to truly make an impact, scalability was key. This realization encouraged us to transition into a non-profit organization in which avenues for funding would be opened. 

Our commitment to this cause runs deep and we sought to share our journey with a wider audience. Hence, we decided to create this blog on our website. This platform allows us to document and share our experiences, our successes, and our challenges. It’s a resource for others who might embark on similar ventures, a testament to the power of perseverance, and a beacon of hope for the transformative impact of education.

We earnestly invite you to join us in this endeavor. Through your support, engagement, and belief in our mission, we can collectively weave a brighter future for the children of Ecuador, together. 

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