The three wheels cross an unpaved road muddy from the last rains from early in the morning. With a pedal stroke, Lalito Gerardo Amílcar Ixcoy, 27, slowly advances through the villages of Santa Cruz del Quiché, in northern Guatemala, carrying a mobile school in search of an encounter with his next student. The girl is already at the door of her house setting up a small table and a plastic bench, which will be her outdoor desk. In the distance, she already glimpses her Primary teacher, who slowly pedals her trike to park it in front of the student.
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As soon as he arrived with his corresponding mask, Lalito put on his face mask, put hydro-alcoholic gel on his hands and installed a rod that measured one and a half meters between the tricycle and the table. The rod ends with a cardboard hand in which the five ways to greet without physical contact are detailed with drawings on each of the fingers: military, Japanese, Thai, eyebrows and Apache. All this "to prevent contagion" of coronavirus, which has already caused more than 1,800 deaths in the Central American country since the first case was detected on March 13.
Three days later, on March 16, classes were suspended at all educational levels and, since then, subjects have been taught virtually for the minority who have the ability to connect to the Internet. According to the last census carried out in 2018 by the National Statistics Institute of Guatemala, in the country only two out of every 10 households (21.2%) have a computer, while only 17.2% have the Internet. This situation is even more precarious in the Quiché department, where only 9.3% of households have a computer and 4.1% access to networks.
“Since there were no possibilities to teach classes in person, and I know the socio-cultural problems that my students have, whose families often cannot read or write and lack technological resources, such as computers, telephones and the Internet, I decided to look for a tricycle to be able to teach at home taking the necessary measures ”, explains Lalito. In addition, it indicates that when classes were suspended, "there were no longer responses from half of the students of the tasks that were being sent." This is how this teacher from a private school in Santa Cruz del Quiché, who is doing his thesis in the Pedagogy Degree, invented a mobile school, which allows him to continue his teaching work in the subjects of Communication and Language, and Mathematics to his ten students between 11 and 12 years old.
Before launching his initiative, Lalito went house to house to speak with the parents of his students so they could tell him whether or not they agreed that he would come on a tricycle so that the boys and girls did not miss their classes because of the pandemic. "After knowing that there would be no physical contact and that I was going to take the necessary measures to protect them, the answer was affirmative and that made me very happy," he highlights.
For this, he worked two weeks with his brother in a mechanical structures company in exchange for giving him the material to build the school on a tricycle with a plastic roof, a blackboard and a glass pane to avoid any possibility. of contagion. Thanks to a saving of 700 quetzales (85 euros), he bought a second-hand bicycle that he painted and in which he installed all the infrastructure to turn it into a mobile school that must travel up to three kilometers to reach the homes of his students. Each day, depending on the distance, he attends three or four who teach one and a half hour individual classes.
In Guatemala, only two out of 10 households (21.2%) have a computer, while only 17.2% have Internet.
Lalito admits that he did have a “little fear” due to the reaction that the authorities of the Ministry of Education could have, who have come to ask for his personal data. "I don't know whether to tell me to stop or to give myself free rein to continue with this project." However, he points out that before launching this initiative, he communicated it to the director of the private school where he works, who authorized him as long as the families accepted it, as it happened.
“Many parents told me that their children could not follow classes virtually because they had no resources. And now the priority is food, so if the school was going to be on the Internet, they were going to let them lose this year ”, reveals the teacher. In this sense, he stresses that the main objective of his project, which he calls triceducational , is that "there is no school dropout".
School dropout and child labor
Precisely, Lucía Verdugo, National Education Officer of the Unesco Office in Guatemala, warns that, if the suspension of classes is prolonged, there may be negative consequences that “result in a setback in the achievements of the country in terms of educational coverage and quality ”, taking into account that at the beginning of 2020, there were already significant challenges with only six out of ten school-age children studying, according to the statistical yearbook of the Ministry of Education.
"It is difficult to specify to what extent school dropout can increase, but it is one of the consequences that we can foresee, mainly in view of the projections made by specialized entities such as the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which estimates a decrease of GDP in the Latin American region of at least 5.3%, as well as the increase in unemployment and poverty and extreme poverty ”, which in Guatemala affected six out of 10 people before the coronavirus (59.3% ), according to the last Living Conditions Survey carried out in 2014.
Thus, ECLAC warns in a report that the temporary closure of schools as a result of the pandemic "has the potential to increase child labor by between one and three percentage points, which would imply that at least between 109,000 and 326,000 boys, girls and adolescents could enter the labor market. "
Almost 800,000 children and adolescents work in Guatemala, of which 263,247 are between seven and 14 years old
All this in a context in which Guatemala is going to breach its commitment made in 2009 through a roadmap that sought to eradicate child labor in 2020, which employs almost 800,000 children and adolescents, of whom 263,247 have between 7 and 14 years old, according to the 2018 National Employment Survey.
The Head of the Unit for the Protection of Working Adolescents of the Guatemalan Ministry of Labor, Claudia Peneleu recalls that in 2016, the Government programmed a new road map in which, like the rest of the countries in the region, it acquired the Commitment to achieving Target 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which states "end child labor in all its forms by 2025".
Peneleu affirms that for Latin America and the Caribbean a projection has been made according to which child labor would be reduced by approximately two percentage points by 2025 compared to the current situation.
ILO plans to eradicate child labor
For his part, the Director General of Social Security of the Guatemalan Ministry of Labor, William Godoy, despite acknowledging that the situation “is not very encouraging”, assures that there is an ILO trend report that establishes that for the 2040 child labor could be eradicated.
In order to prevent the suspension of classes from leading his students to work, Professor Lalito advocates continuing to teach. "Education is essential for our country to succeed." Poverty, he adds, is a “scourge” that lives in Santa Cruz del Quiché, an indigenous majority, which has caused that “many boys and girls no longer get to study and opt for an informal job such as selling fruits on the street” .
For this reason, he decided to bring the school to the doorstep of his students' houses, despite the fact that the private school where he works only pays him a minimal financial amount after classes canceled due to the pandemic. And they even invited him to find another job: “I didn't want to leave my children; I wanted to continue teaching them. ” After teaching classes from his tricycle in which "Profe Lalito 10" is read, in honor of his favorite number in soccer, this teacher continues to work in his brother's mechanical structures company to be able to defray the expenses of his house, where he lives with his wife and three-year-old son. "He is my motive for struggle."
Lalito's original initiative has the support of his community: “The love they have for me is incredible. Sometimes, from the houses they ask me to go ahead and take care of me, which encourages me to continue ”. Lalito is surprised by the impact on the national and international press that his pedaling school has had. "I never imagined it to be like this, I just wanted to make my ten boys and girls happy," he adds. For this reason, he always begins classes with stretching and warm-up exercises, and singing children's songs so that they "get a little motivated", bearing in mind that their students "feel a little bored and stressed", because they don't
"They ask me when this is going to end and if they are going to return to classes," he reveals. During her eight years as a teacher, she says, her students have marked her life. "For their innocence, their honesty, their solidarity and the good people they are." For this reason, she considers that Guatemala “does have a future, but children must be highly motivated to be optimistic. You have to believe in them. " And she starts again to pedal her educational tricycle towards the next student's house.
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