An Andean girl uses the internet at a rural school in Huancayo, east of Lima on April 5, 2002. 

Peru connects poor students with internet

May 1, 2002

HUACRAPUQUIO, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian teen-ager Rosa Eli spends each afternoon in her family's potato, wheat and corn fields, helping till the mountain soil that must produce enough to feed her six brothers and sisters.

Peru, where a quarter of women in rural mountain areas cannot read and more than half the people scrape by on $1.25 a day or less, is pinning its hopes on teen-agers like Eli to help nudge it across the digital divide in a multimillion-dollar push to bring cutting-edge technology to rural schools.

"We're poor farmers ... but here we find out about things we didn't understand -- it's much more advanced," said Eli, clad in the layers of brightly colored skirts and black hat typical of the central Andes. Outside the school in tiny Huacrapuquio, a hamlet with no residential telephone service and about a seven-hour drive from the capital, Lima, a sign reads: "Welcome to the capital of teaching innovation!"

Peru's Plan Huascaran -- named for the Andean nation's highest peak -- was a key campaign plank for President Alejandro Toledo, the U.S.-trained economist who took office last July pledging to help Peru fight poverty and vanquish unemployment and underemployment that together top 50 percent.

So far, Plan Huascaran has connected about 100 rural and urban schools across Peru with top-end Internet service and teaching tools. The government is aiming to increase that number to 5,000 schools by the time Toledo's term ends in 2006.

Under the program, students will use the computers at least two hours a week to hook up with students from other schools in Peru, supplement bare library shelves with information from the Internet and even hold videoconferences for online teaching.

The high-tech plan is a big leap forward for this poor nation, where less than 1 percent of the country's 26 million people has Internet access and 7 percent of people cannot read. According to the private think tank Cuanto, 17 percent of people and 25 percent of women in rural mountain areas are illiterate.

TARGETING REAL-LIFE ACTIVITIES

Officials insist Plan Huascaran will have real-life impact for students, many of whom come from desperately poor subsistence-farming communities, as well as a positive influence on their families and communities.

"Huascaran is like a smart highway system. It will not only allow 5,000 connected schools to give students ... a better education in the long term, but also link their parents to more economically viable activities, like tourism, farming, handicraft," said Sandro Marcone, director of Plan Huascaran.

Marcone said computer use would be targeted toward giving students and their families a leg up in activities crucial in their lives -- for example, hooking up with farmers in other parts of Peru to find out what techniques work for sowing wheat crops, or trading tales online about what kind of weather systems to expect this spring.

"We don't want the effect to be just ethereal ... we want it to be felt in everyday life," he said.

The government will spend $22 million in 2002 on the program and buy 7,000 new computers -- a pricey purchase for a country with a $10.4 billion budget whose economy grew just 0.2 percent last year. Over five years, the program will cost $255 million.

Schools now taking part in Plan Huascaran receive the deal for free, but in the future, students' parents must come up with enough to pay Internet connection fees -- which can total $30 a month, for example, for a class of 20.

It may not seem like much, but every little bit counts in remote areas where people live by bartering and hardly use money at all.

Juan Manuel Suazo, who teaches Eli and 20 others in a two-room secondary school that boasts a library of just 30 books, said the links that the computers give students can help them make the jump from the subsistence farming of their families to something better.

"This prepares them for the future and can help them attain a professional career. It's fundamental in giving the students a way to fend for themselves," he said.

COMPUTERS IN THE JUNGLE, MOUNTAINS

Officials insist the plan will not only enhance students' prospects for the future but boost this cash-strapped nation's often insufficient education system.

"The first effect (of the program) is better communication. Isolated schools can begin to communicate with the bulk of schools," said Marcone.

But in a country of glacier-capped peaks, vast deserts and thick rain forest, where many parents cannot afford to buy school uniforms, some see the plan as overly ambitious.

In the northern jungle, which some Peruvians dub "the green hell," where temperatures can top a steamy 90 degrees F (32 degrees C), officials have been forced to buy a particular brand of computer because it is the only kind that does not fail in such heat. In the southern area of the province of Puno, computers not designed for altitudes of about 12,700 feet do not function properly, Marcone said.

Marcone said it would take time before any positive effects could be seen. "But if we don't think long term, we won't ever be able to make progress," he said.

For 16-year-old Herberth Bravo, however, the program has brought some instant gratification. Cruising a Web site devoted to Peru's famed Inca citadel Machu Picchu, visited by thousands of mostly foreign tourists each year, Bravo is able to enjoy something he might never be able to afford to see for himself.

"I've never been there ... but here I find things that teach me," said the wide-eyed teen-ager.

His teacher, Suazo, agreed as he stood in the schoolroom's doorway, with light pouring in from the potato fields outside. "The simple fact ... (is that) that they are emerging from anonymity and discovering things they never even imagined," he said.

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