Location: Municipality of Caaguazú, Paraguay.
Local partner: COMISIÓN DE AYUDA A ESTUDIANTES RURALES DE ESCASOS RECURSOS (CAERER) (COMMISSION OF RURAL STUDENTS WITHOUT RESOURCE)
Justification: The main cause of backwardness and underutilization of small farming fields in Caaguazú is the result of lack of knowledge in modern production technologies, processing and chain management for farming products.
It is therefore necessary to educate and train young people, so that with modern technology, sense of humanity and solidarity so they are “starter” ferment of change in their own communities.
Objetives:
1. Guarentee with scholarships access to career studies “Administration of agricultural companies” for 60 people without economic resources in rural communities.
2. Commit families of beneficiaries or responsibles of scholarships to assume other costs derived from the career studies.
3. Reorganice progressively family farms of scholarship fellows based on what they have learned in their career studies, so that they may serve as model-schools for their neighbors.
4. Create small and medium sized community cooperatives for farming production under the initiative of scholarship fellows with help of a of revolving credit fund.
Activities:
• Selection of scholarship candidates
• Signing of contract granting scholarship “study-service” and annual pay of scholarships
• Ensure annual costs for accomodation, transport, food, clothing and school supplies.
• Reorganization and progressive improvement of small farms based on the education received in those career studies and elaborate annual reports about results obtained.
• Free technical farm counseling by scholarships fellows for neighbors of their community on request.
• Implementation of the cooperative and revolving funds.
Beneficiary population: A total of 60 teenagers, 60 different families in 20 rural communities in Caaguazú.
Duration of the project: Academic courses 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Budget and financing: € 88.150,00 (participates townhall Oñati, Spain)
Achievement:
• After an intense selection process due to high demand, 60 candidates were selected to benefit from the scholarship.
• Rules have been set up and the young student-fellows have received the regulation about scholarship, type “learning-service” and accepted the commitment.
• Respective tuition fees for the first academic year for fellows have been paid.
• The scholarship fellows have started their first career course “Farm management”
