Quality, Intercultural, and Bilingual Education is a right

Education programs strengthen students’ cultural identity and help prevent the loss of Indigenous languages. Photo: Fe y Alegría

Quality education – one that is relevant, timely, and enduring – is a clear and strong strategy to address inequality and social injustice. But it becomes powerful and effective only if it accompanies policies and concrete measures that minimize or eliminate barriers to the learning and development of students, especially Indigenous youth.  

For Fe y Alegría Peru, this means instituting quality, inclusive and intercultural education. It involves influencing policymakers and strengthening local capacities so that teachers and families have a voice to help transform learning environments. It requires teaching practices that stimulate curiosity for learning, with families committed to ensuring quality education for their children. It means inspiring students to value Indigenous cultural and linguistic diversity and to commit to the protection of their territories in the Pan-Amazon region.  

We will continue to strengthen the capacity of teachers through systematic and comprehensive training that helps improve learning through an intercultural and bilingual approach. We will enhance alliances in territories with diverse social and community actors to consolidate and promote intercultural and bilingual education, value Indigenous cultural and linguistic diversity, eliminate all forms of discrimination, guarantee equal opportunities for learning and development, and give preferential attention to women and girls.  

This requires voices in the PanAmazon region with the capacity to demand and propose concrete actions that ensure adequate financial resources that meet territorial needs, strengthen the training of teachers at higher education institutes and universities, and more. Change is gradual and comes when a set of eff orts, shared views of diverse collaborators and actions converge.  

We have taken actions at a community level to ensure that:  

• parents assume responsibility for their children’s education; • girls have the same opportunities as boys to be educated;
• quality, intercultural, and bilingual education is valued as a right; it is recognized that children learn better in their own language;
• ancestral knowledge is valued as one that enriches the work of teachers; • and education is recognized as a means for personal and community growth.

Canadian Jesuits International is our sister organization with whom we share a common vision of justice, solidarity, and integral human development in the Amazonian territories. We have established a close, fraternal, inspiring, and challenging way of walking, learning, and cultivating the Pope’s call to be a “we” that builds new signs of hope day by day.