8.1. Major risks
Legality
Like mentioned before, one of the biggest risks is and rights and ownership in urban slums.
People basically have two options: they live in the outskirts of the cities but need to commute every day for long hours; or, they can live in illegal settlements in the city. The problem is that the living conditions are really bad. The small huts are built with fragile materials, near rivers with irregular levels of water, gang territories, no electricity or water. Without land rights, slum residents live in fear of eviction and will not invest in their houses. IMPCT could have a hard time as a company building in an illegal settlement.
Attendance
A big challenge will be to have kids not only enrolling into IMPCT’s program but staying with it for many years until they enter a national primary school. It is common to see people rushing in with curiosity when something new comes to a community. Word of mouth will quickly make many mothers come to the educational daycares and hopefully enroll their kids.
However, just as any “product”, so to say, it loses momentum and only the mothers who are really concerned about their kids’ education will continue to bring them.
Payments
During the research trip to El Salvador in January 2015 Andres learned many things from a small formal daycare in the slum of “San Isidro”. One of the problems they had is due to the fact that they are financially supported by cooperatives and unions, they only charge around
$1 per week. This is just a symbolic contribution. However, at IMPCT we depend on these tuition payments so people will need to pay them daily, weekly or monthly.
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Child abuse
Child abuse is also common in underprivileged areas. The most common way is physical aggression. In Latin America, like many cultures in the world, parents hit kids when they do wrong. This is socially accepted but there is a limit. Andres shares his testimony:
“My mother once hit me when I was 6 years old because I wanted to steal bubble gum from a supermarket. She hit my hands and bottom in front of everyone. Lesson learned”.
This is ok, but the problem is when you do it just because a kid doesn’t understand something you are teaching him, or when he does something clumsy. They are still kids, so let them be kids. People in the slums have little or no education so they don’t understand the deep psychological damage they are causing to their children. Not to mention the sexual abuse from parents, relatives, caregivers or even teachers that goes on in poorer areas.
Gangs
Gangs are a major problem in some Latin American countries. El Salvador is not an exception. Every day we have several deaths related to gangs and this discourages everyone.
Central America is right there on the top most violent countries in the world. Poor people are the ones who suffer the most. They are exposed every day to gangs who are constantly recruiting younger and younger generations. Not only individuals but businesses too. In fact, there is this thing called “la renta” and it consists of gang members calling companies and they basically say: “you will give me 1% of your monthly earnings, if you don’t do this we will kill one of your employees per month”. The police has very limited power. These gang members are merciless and is a very organized mafia. We can’t imagine what would happen if they would menace one of IMPCT’s daycares.
8.2. How they are mitigated
Legality
Thanks to programs such as UN-Habitat, Cities Alliance, Slum Dwellers International and
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continuously being updated. By involving NGOs, private sector, and raising awareness of individuals around the world, we become a strong voice in favor of slum residents and continuously seek their advocacy with local governments to tenure options. In El Salvador, IMPCT plans on joining forces with NGOs. In fact, they already have developed big communities from scratch and the team could build the Educational Daycares inside them.
They would donate the small land required to build the facility.
Attendance
The attendance problem will be solved with constant education not only to kids but also to parents. In fact, IMPCT can only provide half of the children’s education at the Educational Daycares. The other half is in the hands of their parents who, most of the time, don’t understand the importance of early childhood education. This is why IMPCT will provide weekend gatherings in the Educational Daycare inviting parents to come and receive guidance (pull strategy). Of course, not all parents will come, so the team plans on having field agents to go and make home visits convincing and informing parents on the importance of ECE (push strategy). Another solution for attendance is to have only an option to pay tuition by month, this will oblige parents to bring their kids every day.
Payments
For the payment of tuition IMPCT simply won’t allow kids to enter the facilities if they haven’t paid the tuition. Informal promises like “I will pay you tomorrow” will not be accepted even if there is trust among the community members. If mothers can’t afford this, IMPCT has thought of a solution: sponsorship. The team will provide a “Sponsor a kid”
program in privileged schools in the capital where basically anyone can sponsor the education of one of these kids. They will assume the responsibility of paying less than $30 per month which is nothing to these families. Some NGOs are already doing this and you hear stories of a family sponsoring one kid his whole life and then the kid, now an adult, goes happily to work for the sponsor family.
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Child abuse
Part of IMPCT’s culture is to promote respect, tolerance and human dignity. We are all born with an innate right to be valued, respected, and to receive ethical treatment. Some of the practices that violate human dignity include rape, social exclusion, labor exploitation, bonded labor and slavery. Sadly, in the slums of the world you find most of these. IMPCT wants to change this by teaching kids, since they are little, the values and principles essential in life.
The teachers and caregivers will be rigorously selected, trained and instructed on how to treat every child. Violations to the rules and code of conduct will be severely punished and completely unacceptable.
Gangs
This has been a topic in which IMPCT has been doing a lot of research. The team has talked to other daycares, government, congressmen, mayors and mothers in the communities to get their opinion. They all replied what I was expecting: “It depends”. Of course it depends on the area we are talking about: there are dangerous areas but there are mostly safe areas and this is where IMPCT wants to go. Surprisingly, the most valuable information came from the mothers and they say that gang members live among them and their kids also go to daycares like “Casa Materna”. To Andres’ surprise, gang members protect these daycares because part of the reason a gang exists in the beginning is the fact that they lack these kind of opportunities from the government. Social injustice is rough but when people come to help the less fortunate, gang members respect and protect them. So IMPCT has to carefully select the area where to build.
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Figure 22 IMPCT cycle of education for children, mothers and caregivers
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