CHALLENGES AND DIFFICULTIES - CUSCO, PEROU

Founded in 1990, Qosqo Maki is a not-for-profit association that is dedicated (without making a distinction between them) to children and adolescents, boys and girls that work or live permanently in the streets of Cusco, in Peru.
Among the activities carried out by Qosqo Maki, two "risky", experimental actions are described below.

When one starts an intervention programme, the temptation to think that the problems will be resolved by an exterior party is strong, especially where children and young people are concerned. To speak about a challenge is to recognise that there are risks, problems, and difficulties that create new challenges. To think about this is to progress towards better adapted action. The reflection, set out below, is based on the action that we have carried out against drugs; particularly the inhalation of "terokal", a type of glue used by shoemakers.

* Two experimental actions
* Other work by Qosqo Maki
* How the dormitory works
* Glue (el terokal)
* The loss of dynamic
* Experience of dormitory: conclusion
* What lessons can we draw from this experience?
* What lessons have we learned along the way?

Among our activities, we propose two experimental actions:

• The municipal dormitory for children, which we manage jointly with the local council. It is available to children and adolescents, boys and girls, who have nowhere to sleep at night and who are thus obliged to sleep in unsuitable conditions. The dormitory is open from 8 o’clock in the evening until 8 o’clock the following morning.
   - 98% of users of the dormitory are boys, and 2% are girls. The dormitory consists of 44 beds, plus spare mattresses in case of a sudden extra need. 300 different children sleep here each year; 35-40 a night. They can come as often as they like, up to the age of 18. 50% of users come regularly for one month, and only 11% come regularly over 6 months.
   - There is one dormitory for the older children (15-18 years), one for children of 12-14 years, and one for under-12 year olds and girls of all ages. There are five showers and three sinks, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, an office, and a courtyard where personal lockers are situated.
   - The local council provides glasses of milk.

• The library is not academic; it is open to the public, and aimed at adolescents and children. It is particularly used by local young people and dormitory users.
  It consists of a reading room, a room with newspapers and magazines, a games room, a common room for watching videos, putting on theatrical presentations and holding conferences, two rooms for various workshops, and a courtyard.
  1300 young people visit it each year; 70 come each day.
  To gain entry, a yearly fee of 2 sol is charged. The opening hours are from 5-10 pm.

In these two places, we practice a method of free education. Simply speaking, we are looking to establish a dynamic stemming from the choices and the interests of the child. The role of the adult is not to convey knowledge or to change behaviour, but to be available to listen, to anticipate needs, to establish links, to understand worries, to inspire initiatives, to promote opinions, to enlarge perspectives, and to learn together.

- Developing materials for educational games usable anywhere.
- Publishing of a monthly newsletter.
- Coordinating our work with peer institutions.
- Conducting internal studies to better systematise the interventions, and external studies to better understand the neighbourhood.

Our contact with "glue-sniffers" (children who inhale "el terokal", or shoemakers’ glue) takes place mostly at the dormitory. We are in a difficult position at the moment, as the glue-sniffers are not allowed to use the dormitory, even though they are the most in need of its services.

In creating the dormitory programme, we decided to not focus on giving out information. We knew that we couldn’t recreate a familial home, nor could we create a hotel that received children as clients. When we started we had few contacts. We simply noticed that among children living on the street, many had left home and were trying to avoid institutional boarding houses. In fact, their situation is similar to that of couples in periods of separation. The only difference is that a couple’s separation is socially acceptable, whereas runaways are not.

We have researched the pressures that drive a child to leave his home. Among these, contrary to popular belief, a child’s own sense of independence is highly significant. Next comes mistreatment by parents or by older brothers, the death of a father or mother, a child's violence against his mother, alcoholism, poverty, separation from parents, and peer pressure.

We set out to manage the dormitory with the users themselves. In so doing, we turned away from their deficiencies (abandoned children) and toward their potential (free children). We derived our strategy from this idea, drawing on all sources of individual and group responsibility. Life in the dormitory was organised around general assemblies where decisions were made by consensus. Each person had to give his opinion in order to accept or debate a proposition. At the same time, a team of educators came to better understand the day-to-day reality of those using the dormitory. These educators lived in the street, talked with the young people, spent nights with them, and discussed their everyday lives. In this way, the community chest was born. In the street, a small group that had been meeting with an educator decided to pay into a community fund to purchase blankets and bread, until one of the young people proposed the idea: "It would be better to put the blankets in the dormitory and simply stay there.". Working youths gave the equivalent of the price of two loaves of bread, the youngest beggars gave the equivalent of one loaf of bread, while the oldest gave the equivalent of four loaves.

Everyone played sports at 6 o’clock in the morning when the young people realised that the educator was out for a run, before they were supposed to be up. Problems and new developments were discussed with everyone every six months generally, with everyone leaving at the end of the week to go to a place far from Cusco to evaluate the general operation of the dormitory and the progress of everyone involved, including the educators. The evaluation of the educators by the young people demonstrates the horizontal relationship, the capacity for each to participate in the functioning of the dormitory, and the different roles for each position. The basis for what we call the "co-management" of the dormitory was established.

Logically, to summarise, this seems ideal. Yet this was not to be, as things did not go as planned and unexpected problems always arose. What is certain, though, is that a dynamic of creation, or discovery, of exchanging experiences existed and was truly enriching, for the educators as well as for the young people who used the facility.

The habit of inhaling glue ("sniffing") had not previously been prevalent. We realized that sometimes some of the older children took it to "soar" from time to time, but this didn’t interfere terribly with the functioning of the dormitory. It was simply considered taboo. The girls were not trying it, not more among those who chose to leave their family. It was, as it was for any child, the desire to try something illicit during his free time. They stopped with the same ease that they started. After listening to the first-hand accounts of some users, it turned out that users could quit inhaling the glue from one time to another in order to go see a movie, to listen to a trusted adult who happened to call, to do some new work, because they had "had enough of it".

Now the situation is different. Young people start sniffing glue at a much younger age (10-11 years old) and do not hesitate to do so in public, and each time girls play more of a role in training boys in how to sniff. Everyone sniffs openly, everyday, as if publicly proclaiming some sort of protest. Another difference: actual experiences suggest difficulty in quitting, speaking of the importance of the hallucinations to them, but many say the importance of sniffing glue is in forgetting their own unacceptable reality. This is an important point. Who could live (what one could truly call living, not simply breathing) under permanent stress? And who are we to condemn those who rebel against such a situation? Or is it that we condemn them in order to convince ourselves that we are not somehow responsible for them?

The first-hand accounts pointed out two weak points in our project: the lack of studies and the difficulty in coordination. What do we know about shoemaker’s glue? Medical or sociological surveys on inhaling glue fumes are few and cannot truly serve as a reference point on the topic. Ways to help glue-sniffers to quit abusing simply do not exist at this time. It is obvious that if glue does not have the connotations of cocaine or heroin because it does not have the same economical effects, it is nevertheless a part of the same system. Many imaginative alternatives have been proposed to producing coca, meaning the supply side, but what solutions have been proposed to satisfy the demand? And, essentially, the demand for what? We cannot fall into the false assumption that drug use is relegated to a few marginalised individuals looking to escape reality. In the same way that the wind announces a storm, rebellion is an indicator of social injustice. On our small level, it is obvious that drug use is a demand for social usefulness.

Obviously, each municipal dormitory cannot furnish a job to each person that demands one. But each dormitory project could be a grain of sand on a track that opens in order to develop young people’s ability to overcome obstacles. But the dormitory cannot be a pretext for avoiding political responsibilities.

With time, the dormitory lost its dynamism. It is worth the effort to study this process in order to understand why.

The routine took over when the established norms stopped being questioned. For example the opening hours (from 8.30-11pm).

Cooperation between the users and the youth leaders broke down because the youth leaders lost contact with the users. They no longer took time to get to know each of the children and discuss their opinions on matters. Instead, they dedicated themselves to noting down dates and handing out tasks.

There ceased to be a mutual learning process. The child had become the object of intervention. The group had kept its form, but had lost its spirit. Decisions were no longer being taken by consensus, but with weariness, in order to arrive more quickly at a decision. The themes were repetitive, and the agreements were not respected. In order to highlight the impact of the dormitory, a process of having activities planned was established by the youth leaders, who had lost sight of the objective of the activity. For example, the subscription charges paid by each user into the communal account became a priority, while what was in fact important was the discussion, the collective decision-making over changes for the benefit of all. It was the adults, who were not charged, who decided what the funds had to be spent on. For the users, the share demanded upon their entry turned into a sort of tax, a duty to be paid to be able to sleep. The dormitory, since then, is perceived more and more as a low-cost hotel, for use while waiting for something better. The joint building of a communal project lost itself along the way.

It is in this context that the decision was taken to refuse entry to glue-sniffers because they (which is true) were stirring up trouble and setting a bad example. As a result, the dormitory is no longer a public facility but elitist. In addition, the glue-sniffers grouped together and increased in numbers, attracting by will or force, new followers.

First, an attempt was made to organise discussions or other events to fight against the glue sniffing. This had no effect, on the contrary, these measures proved counter-productive. We tried to tackle the glue sniffing, i.e. as a symptom, when it would have been better to offer the glue-sniffers more attractive alternatives. Sport can sometimes be a good alternative. A lot of children come to the dormitory without glue on days where games are organised. Games are played, the best wins and in the process friendships are made and good times shared.

To conclude, regarding the experience of the dormitory, the challenges are diverse:
- organising a public service (available to all and not elitist) which benefits the users as much as those around them is a completely different undertaking from one which consists of detaining the rebels for the security of those around them
- showing the effectiveness of an intervention means evaluating its individual and social impact. In other words, what must be recorded of daily events (without invading personal privacy nor upsetting sensitive children) that will serve as indicators for the progress of those concerned and that will help them to improve their personal development?
- evaluating and clearly sharing out the costs between the different authorities that will benefit from the programme.

The project must not confuse the objective and the indicator. Drug-taking is an indication of social protest and individual suffering, tackling the indicator itself will not achieve anything. It is imperative that the project targets the victims and not the cause. We are not working against the glue but for the glue-sniffers.

The project is a cooperation between different parties concerned and neither a manipulation, nor an imposition, nor an act of compassion.

The project must necessarily be based on the liberty and choice of those concerned: it is they alone who are able to steer their development.

The purpose of the project is to increase opportunities so that those concerned have a variety of options from which to choose.

The first condition to meet to increase opportunities is to know and make known (including to those implicated) the reality and the problems it poses. This implies a process of continuous study.
The second condition is to coordinate action.

The sign of the end of the project will be that it has become dynamic.

The informal areas in the dormitory allow for and encourage creativity as well as opportunities to socialise (in our case, the library), they must be co-managed, and have the possibility of staging sporting or cultural events, contests, organisation of trips, etc..

The programmes of the ministry for employment allowing children who have not completed a formal education to receive technical training for a duration of three months, followed by an apprenticeship of three months and leading to a certificate of professional competence.

The importance of the political and social dimension, the will of the local community.

For all further information please contact :

Street corner education ...

... Action against child prostitution

Created on 5 march, 2005 - Updated on 15 november, 2007