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Jessica Boccardo
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07/02/07
First impressions
Posted By: jessicaTrujillo introduced me with the Peru of contradictions, the Sierra and the Coast, those 500 years of new history on top of what was thought to be old but is now, it always was, everywhere and present.
The Central Market dispaying lucuma, an ancient fruit unique to Peruvian soil, names like Rupa-Rupa reminding everyone quechua is still a living language and stories about playful gnomos who tie horses' hair into knots that nobody can untide but go away on their own after some years, are just some of the myriad of reminders of the strong grasp of their past.
It is especially here in El Porvenir, the neighbourhood where SKIP works, that I stop myself to think more and more about these and other contradictions, on how it can be that parents have to pay for public schools, that we have been trying to go teach English for the last week to a school but most of the times we have just encountered an empty classroom( "the teacher did not come today") or a closed School's entrance door ( "Huelga de Hambre" and other manifestations).
I believe that most unjustices are inherited from the past. No memory for indigenous people, no second thought for the poor. But it is in today that things show all of their absurdity. "A laptop for every child", that is what the Peruvian government is thinking of introducing as a national public policy this year. But where is the money that should be going to these public schools and that would allow the rest of the kids in El Porvenir that SKIP cannot help (around 2000) to go to school?
I just wonder. And think more and more about these and other contradictions.
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Jessica Boccardo is an AP Peace Fellow for SKIP who will be working for Supporting Kids in Peru (SKIP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling children to access education.
Originally from Argentina, where she obtained her BA in economics, she came to the USA in 2004 to further her education in international development and other pressing socioeconomic issues. She completed her master’s degree in public policy in Georgetown University in 2006 with a concentration on international policy development.
During her graduate studies she worked as a research assistant at Georgetown where she worked for the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), a federally funded education voucher program for low-income families.
Her job was divided between statistical analysis and an important qualitative component since she had to conduct interviews and focus groups with the different actors involved, mainly students, parents and teachers. This experience gave her a first-hand experience with educational problems and helped her understand the multi-dimensional constraints that families face when needing to send their children to school.
Lately, she has been working at the World Bank in the Poverty Reduction Unit (PREM), focusing on trade diversification and growth, studying mainly Sub-Saharan African countries. In her job she has also explored other issues of educational policies; more specifically, she has studied the links between tertiary education and development through export growth and the necessary technological capabilities needed to catch up with other countries’ performance.
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