Hear
This is a special year for Franco Pereyra. He achieved goals that, not long ago, seemed like remote dreams: he not only returned to high school, which he had dropped out of in 2020, but At the age of 18 he was able to read a book for the first time in his life. He borrowed it at school and devoured it in three days. “It felt nice to get to read something. It wasn’t very long, but it was good to start with”says the teenager with a shy smile.
But there is more: in recent months, He also had the opportunity to use a computersomething I had not had access to either. “I liked it, I never imagined that so many things could be done with programs and applications”he says, sitting in front of his house, in Benito Legerén, a settlement on the outskirts of the city of Concordia, in Entre Ríos, where he lives with his mother, his stepfather and three younger brothers.
Franco was 15 years old when he left school. It was in the middle of the pandemic and today he remembers that “It cost him everything.” He felt that he was far behind his peers and his greatest difficulty was reading and writing. While in high school, he had not yet managed to read fluently and had many difficulties when writing, something that caused him shame and detonated his self-esteem.
When the teacher asked him to read aloud, he felt overwhelmed by what he calls “the snowball”: he got more and more stuck, and it became impossible for him to continue. He had come to think that “he couldn’t”, that school was not for him.. So, He left the classroom to work with his family in the mountains, “throwing eucalyptus branches” for one of the forests that abound in the area. It was hard work and her dream of “being someone in life” was slipping through her hands.
Franco’s story has points in common with that of the thousands of girls, boys and adolescents in Argentina who, even when they are in school, do not know how to read or write at an advanced age, as stated by a LA NACION investigation. It is a drama with a deep background: it is childhoods and adolescence crossed by multigenerational poverty; the lack of opportunities; the labor exploitation; the absence of adult references that they have finished school and can help them with homework; abandonment and repetition; Inter alia.
Felicitas Silva and Florencia Martínez, two young teachers, came face to face with that reality when they started working at Concordia. Both are co-founders of Volando Alto, a social organization focused on education that It has opportunity development centers in two settlements of that Entre Ríos city, La Bianca and Benito Legerén. There go some 180 girls, boys and adolescents working at school: They have reading-writing and digital literacy classes, initiation in mathematics, and psycho-pedagogical and emotional support, among other key points.
In addition, Volando Alto has a program called Escuelita Finnegans, an initiative that it launched thanks to the support of the company of the same name, specialized in software. It is intended for young people who dropped out of secondary school or who finished it but did not continue studying or working.. That was the space where Franco arrived, by chance, last year and where he began to take giant steps: not only in reading and writing, but there he used a computer for the first time and learned a lesson that he repeats to this day: “That you have to arrive on time and that studying is the main thing.”
It was in that context where he made a key decision: returning to high school after three years of not being in school. “I liked coming back because I already missed school,” admits the young man, who was able to break the barrier of “I can’t.”
Barely 14 kilometers separate the residents of Benito Legerén from the center of the city of Concordia. 14 kilometers that for many are an abyss. In fact, several of the neighborhood kids never saw a traffic light. For many families, affording a bus ticket (it is 600 pesos for adults, 240 for primary school students and 300 for secondary school students) is impossible.
“Poverty in Concordia is very peripheral. One can walk through the center without realizing that it is the second poorest city in the country. “You have to go a little further to the outskirts to find reality,” says Florencia Martínez. Concordian by origin, he was the one who proposed to Felicitas to settle there with the Volando Alto educational project, to which Francisco Bollini, the third co-founder, would also join. What mobilized her was the fact that her city is the second poorest conglomerate in the country behind Resistencia, where poverty reaches 69.2% of childrenaccording to data from Indec.
During the time he left school, Franco worked in a lumberyard. However, with each passing day the certainty that this was not for him was reinforced. “I have several vision problems. The strongest one is called keratoconus, it is a disease in which the cornea takes the shape of a cone. Using contact lenses stops, but that rigid lens hurts me when dust or any dirt gets in, or there is a lot of wind. Therefore, there are jobs that I cannot do,” she details.
In a WhatsApp group they shared a link to sign up for the Volando Alto workshops. Franco did not hesitate: he wrote and they suggested that he join Finnegans.
“We seek to ensure that children do not abandon the formal education system, that they can finish high school and that, tomorrow, they have the necessary tools that allow them to take advantage of the opportunities that exist in the city and in the world. For this, the management of new technologies is essential”says Florence.
For this reason, digital literacy is one of the central axes of the Escuelita. “One of the surprises we had was that the vast majority of kids had never had access to a computer. Like Franco, who ended up managing programs that he had never managed, he realized that he could make digital designs and solve logic problems,” says Florencia. “So one day he told us: ‘I’m going to enroll in high school again.’ For us, for the kids to see that they really can is the greatest pride.”
Blas Briceño is the founder and CEO of Finnegans. The firm has 300 employees, a headquarters in Buenos Aires and another in Concordia, where Blas is from and where they became one of the main employers in the private sector in recent years. Seeing that his city “was first in the poverty and unemployment rankings,” Blas began to think about how he could contribute “to the training experience of new professionals interested in the software industry.”
In that search, he met the Volando Alto team and they decided to join forces. “We contribute by donating computers, we contribute with teachers’ fees and we also invite our employees to participate as tutors and trainers for the children, and this generates multiple benefits,” Blas assures. For him, the little school puts on the table how “there are a lot of young people who, with the right encouragement and accompaniment, can make a very strong click and turn their destiny around.”
In other words, opportunities are the door that allows girls, boys and adolescents in poverty to project a future. “Talking to the kids and learning about their journeys makes everything we are doing worthwhile. “I would like to replicate this project throughout the country,” says the businessman.
Franco shows his high school folders and when asked if he dares to read something, at first he hesitates. Slowly, he begins with the summary of a novel: “There have been many years of listening to the six o’clock church bells in his dark room, wondering things.” Today, he still has a hard time reading straight, although “not as much as before.” He also says that he was overcoming his fear of speaking in front of others, that shame that made him choke on his words.
−What is needed to be able to learn to read and write?
−Patience and a lot of practice. It is still difficult for me to write because I forget accents and accents a lot. But I’m already used to reading.
When he feels that “the snowball” is coming back to haunt him, he doesn’t let anxiety overcome him. “Now, if it happens to me, I stop, breathe, and there it comes out”says the teenager. And he assures that, when he studies, he feels that he is “taking advantage of his time,” because he knows that it is an investment for his future.
His mother was not able to finish primary school and when Franco graduates from secondary school he will become the first in his family to achieve that goal. Afterwards, he would like to go to university and study cooking.. “I would like to have my business. I dream of achieving what I want. Have my house, my things. Another dream would be to have eye surgery,” says the young man.
On rainy days, like that afternoon, the dirt streets of Benito Legerén become an impassable neighborhood, and Franco looks at the sky trying to predict if the water will let up. Avoiding puddles, he walks away with his backpack on his shoulder, heading to school.
