CHILDREN RECEIVE TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN RURAL AREAS

Monday 9 June 2014
  • 1700 beneficiaries in rural areas of Jinotega and Matagalpa
  • Working on child rights, participation and protection

09.06.2014. Managua, Nicaragua. Andrea Núñez-Flores Rey

A boy participating in a carpentry workshop. 28/05/2014. The Cuá.

1700 kids and adolescents receive formal, alternative and technical education in rural communities of Jinotega and Matagalpa since 2012. Save the Children funded the project “Children Lead the Way Program” and the partner organization Cuculmeca executed it.

The goals are the access and retention of working children in primary and technical education, but also the improvement of their labor conditions. “I am going to participate in a carpentry workshop and I am very interested because am going to learn a professional and, maybe, I can work as a carpenter. I am waiting for it because there are not a lot of jobs here”, Jexin explains, a working teenager (16) who lives in a small community from El Cuá, Jinotega.

Furthermore, other aims of the project are child participation and protection against every kind of violence. To achieve this, the organizations are doing advocacy in order to improve the government policies and local programs to prevent the economic exploitation against children and adolescents.

“The students drop out when the coffee planting season starts. Since they are 8-year-old, they work in farms. In my orchard, I do not allow children under 15-year-old to work”, a small coffee producer from the community Siares, in Matagalpa, affirms.

LEARNING AND LEADING

In this department, 900 working kids participate in the activities and workshops, and in Jinotega 800 do it. “I received imitation jewelry and now am a teacher for other beneficiaries of the project”, tells us Jexin, who is also involved in activities to develop child leadership.

“Jexin attends communication and leadership lessons. Those are for kids who have leader skills. Thanks to this, they are multipliers and explain to other children what they learned”, clarifies us Rosalín Espinosa, Cuculmeca technician.   

 

“I did not know anything about child rights; I only knew that I should to study. But with Cuculmeca, I learned that we had other rights, as health or identity. I explained this to my family and friends who are not attending the workshops”, affirms Jexin cheerfully. 

Jexin showing his imitation jewelry. El Rosario