Eight years of productive efforts in the heart of the Amazon

For eight consecutive years the Marists of Peru (Province of Santa María de los Andes) have travelled every January to the Peruvian Amazon to offer courses to the educators of the indigenous communities (Achuar, Kandozi, Awajun, Wampi, Shawi, Chapra, Quechua, Shiwilo, among others) and to support them in their personal and professional formation.

This month, forty-eight Brothers, teachers and students have arrived, and others have returned, to the Amazon to meet with the native teachers of Datem del Marañon. This initiative, “A Teacher for Datem”, is promoted by the Champagnat University in Lima.

“The volunteers of 2020 have not come motivated by compassion; we have come to learn from the WISDOM of these people: harmony with nature, honesty in acting, simplicity in sharing, sincere welcome to those who knock on their doors, gratitude for what they receive—these are values that stand out not only personally, but especially in the community of each ethnic group,” expressed Brother Bernardino Pascual, from Datem del Marañon.

At the end of January, 115 teachers from the different indigenous communities will have obtained their degree and more than 200 graduates will be able to continue their studies to obtain their degree in 2021 at the Champagnat University in Lima.

“As a Marist university, after 30 years we continue to believe in the meetings of sharing and distribution; of welcoming and collecting; of giving and receiving; of teaching and learning ‘with one heart and one spirit’, a desire that was part of the great dream of Marcellin Champagnat, the master of the great and the small”, added Brother Bernardino.

“A Teacher for Datem” is a project launched in 2012 by the Marcellin Champagnat University of Lima, Peru, with the collaboration of Marist volunteers who each year travel to the northeast of the country to train and advise native bilingual teachers according to the Plan of Study.