Rural Casa Barrancas Community Center
Community members gather in front of Casa Barrancas.
The Casa Comunitaria Barrancas (Casa Barrancas Community Center) is the focal point of the Foundation’s programs in rural education and sustainable livelihood.
Previously an abandoned government school, the building is now owned by a Foundation board member. The Casa Barrancas Community Center is located at the foot of a narrow river valley conveniently close to the single road passing through this rural area. This refurbished facility hosts a school library with daily tutoring, a small computer center, and access to sports equipment. It serves as a "home" base with personal lockers for many of our remote scholarship students who live up the valley on foot trails. Classes in dance, theatre and ceramics have been offered in collaboration with the Sucre state government, and with the Fundación Centro Cultural San Juan, a youth center located in a nearby town. The Community Center also serves as a common meeting area, a much-used storage space for campesinos transporting goods to and from town, and the site for medical campaigns and public health presentations. We periodically sponsor cultural events, theatrical presentations, carpentry, and other training workshops at the center.
The Community Center opened in March, 2006 with an inaugural celebration that included cultural, health, and educational activities. For pictures, please click here.
Primary school students attend a ceramics workshop. Some of the clay is harvested from riverside deposits right in our valley.
Training workshops are offered for the teachers of the valley's remote elementary school.
Classes in dance and theatre are popular with the students.
These rural students have access to computers for the first time in their lives.
