How UPEI is helping Chilean youth improve their lives

A team of academics from UPEI that started a small school on a remote Island in Chile four years ago will soon allow the school to fly on its own.

The Wekimn School Project on Chilo Island aims to teach rural communities how to use their indigenous skills to find jobs and create new projects.

Project director Kate Tilleczek told CBC Radio's Island Morning the school provides an opportunity to re-engage the local Williche indigenous youth, many of whom have a Grade 3 education or less.

They are putting into practice modern practices in order to ensure that they will have the type of ecosystem and environmental systems that they require in order to sustain in their communities.- Debbie MacDonald

For some students, Tilleczek said, it's their first time in a classroom.

"Many haven't had the opportunity to attend school ... the remoteness of where they live, running into discrimination in their formal schooling," she said.

"It gives them that space to come back to school, learn not to hate school, learn to love school, and at the same time be embedded in their own traditions, cultures, language, history."

The project wraps up in April, but the goal is to have the school certified by the Chilean government and continue to be operated by the local community.

Intercultural education and health

The program offered in conjunction with theWilliche Council of Chiefsbegan about four years ago and became operational with funding from Global Affairs Canada (formerly the Canadian International Development Agency).

Tilleczek said there are basically two programs developed with local input that upgrade students to a high school level of education intercultural education and intercultural health.

The programs involve instruction in areas like human rights, reclaiming the lost local language of Mapudungun, research and sustainable development, anthropology and the process of learning.

Recycling, ecotourism

Project manager Debbie MacDonald explained these areas of instruction have led to knowledge about recycling, ecotourism, and growing and using medicinal plants.

She noted that recycling is a problem for locals who, until recently, didn't have to deal with garbage and plastics.

"So, they are putting into practice modern practices in order to ensure that they will have the type of ecosystem and environmental systems that they require in order to sustain in their communities," MacDonald said.

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