Innovating for Youth in Paraguay

I recently spent a few days with the wonderful and innovative staff of the Paraguayan microfinance organization Fundacion Paraguaya.

Before my week in Asuncion, I knew practically nothing about this landlocked country, snuggled in between Brazil and Bolivia to the north and Argentina to the south. Here’s a quick primer on what I learned:

After winning its independence from Spain in 1811, by 1865, Paraguay was involved in another even bloodier battle — the War of the Triple Alliance — against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. One staggering statistic from this war is that Paraguay is said to have lost not only much of its territory, but also more than two thirds of its male population.

As you might imagine, this plunged Paraguay into a time of deep economic depression and resulted in much political instability. Between 1904 – 1954, Paraguay had 31 presidents, many of whom took and left their office by way of military coups. This was followed by the brutal 35 year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, ending in 1989. While in later years, Stroessner’s rule helped bring Paraguay into the 21st century economically, there were hundreds of accounts of human rights abuses, including kidnappings, torture and corruption. Currently, the political climate is slowly getting better and Paraguay held it’s first successful democratic election in 2008.

And now for a few statistics on on Paraguay’s society and (drum roll) education system.

• With about 6 million people, Paraguay is the 2nd poorest country in South America (just after Bolivia).
• 30-50% of Paraguayans live in poverty.
• Primary school is free and compulsory for 7-13 year-olds (1st – 7th grade) That being said, children are only required to attend school for ~700 hours annually, compared to ~1100 hours for students in the US and up to 1500 hours for students in Chile.
• Stated literacy rates are quoted as beings as high 93% for women and 95% for men, but I found these numbers are often based on the number of people who attended primary school, rather than the number of students who completed primary school or passed a literacy test. This is “a dubious assumption given the large number of monolingual Guaraní speakers who entered but failed to complete elementary school. Such speakers represented an estimated 90 percent of the children entering rural primary schools.” (Country Studies)
• In 1997 there were 905,813 students in primary schools. In that same year, there were 327,775 students at the secondary level.  Only 1/3 of students move onto high school, and drop out rates remain high.

Considering all this, you might imagine that hope is hard to find when talking to Paraguayans about the future of their young people. However, I found exactly that while talking to the staff of Fundacion Paraguaya (FuPa).

With the FuPa student lending team: Nancy Ramos and Tania Almada

FuPa is an organization built on the pillars of hard work, optimism and innovation. In 1985, it became the first microfinance organization to open its doors in Paraguay. Now, with 20 regional offices and more than 37,000 microfinance clients, FuPa has become more than just the first MFI in Paraguay, it’s become a leader in the field of bringing business-building credit to the under-served, and it’s building on its success in new and exciting ways.

For this reason alone, we are proud to partner with them. However, in addition, FuPa has a unique and ongoing focus on supporting education efforts in Paraguay. Specifically, FuPa has developed two landmark programs directly targeted at young people.

The first, Junior Achievement, is a program that teaches entrepreneurial skills to high schoolers by helping them develop their own real businesses. This not only teaches real-life business skills to youth, but also is having a dramatic impact on graduation rates among its members.

Photo of a student business from FuPa’s Junior Achievement program

The second is FuPa’s self sufficient Organic Agricultural School. To quote their mission, “In a country where agriculture dominates the economy and where over half the population is rural, the sustainability of environment is critical.” This program teaches modern business, ranching and farming skills to Paraguay’s rural youth who will most likely maintain an agricultural lifestyle throughout their lives. By teaching these vital skill sets, FuPa is helping the next generation of Paraguay’s farmers be more competitive in the global marketplace. They hope that this will contribute the economic well being of their students’ families, to the environmental health of their country and to the financial success of Paraguay as a whole. This school has been lauded as one of the most successful demonstrations of sustainable rural economic development in the world and is being replicated in multiple countries.

Photos from FuPa’s Agricultural School

With this type of leadership, innovation and commitment to creating educational programs for the underserved youth of Paraguay, it’s easy to see why we picked FuPa to help us develop a loan product targeted a sending young people to college. In a country where education is not just a way up the corporate ladder, but a way out of poverty, we see our partnership with FuPa as providing hope and opportunity to hundreds, if not thousands of Paraguay’s youth.

FuPa currently has 82 students and counting on the Vittana site, with students interested in everything from accounting to nutrition. Their history of successfully meeting difficult challenges with visionary solutions leads me to believe not only will they continue to add more and more students every month, but we’ll also see them serving the poor in new and exciting ways for years to come!

Tagged as: education, fundacion paraguaya, literacy, student loans