Citizenship education
Learning at school and in society

BERUM, Libraries for rural, urban and underprivileged educators.

Lima, Peru (Regions of Huánaco, Junín y Pasco)

The BERUM Program is, in all its elements, a system designed to obtain an efficient technology transfer, which can produce a new "mental model" in the teachers. This means "an institutional advance" of such a kind that it reorients the sense of its educational action toward the "education for production and local development". This will foster a strong increase in the quality of life, in a few generations, strengthening the economy and migration inhibition in the populations of each rural zone in which it had been experimented (overcoming poverty). The system has been designed according to the needs and potentialities of small populations in a state of poverty. These, due to their own limitations, require an external effort to start the local leaders training dynamics and the use of appropriated technologies to take advantage of the natural, social and cultural resources existing in the local surrounding for their own benefit.

The basic tool of the program is distance education of voluntary teachers, within an official management network that engages the leadership and voluntary assistance of hundreds of participating teachers, and the official system monitoring for its management. Its aim is education as a pertinent personal experience, linked to personal and community destiny, deeply supporting the teamwork and the student's self-esteem. BERUM applies the tripod strategy: 1. It gives quality information about sustainability in nature, appropriate technology, useful knowledge, human development and democratic experience (partly, through books). 2. Daily in-room practice of the Delors report's "4 pillars of education", based on the students' capacities of getting to the truth, being equitable, being jointly binding, being enterprising and live the beauty. 3. Promotion of research and incorporation of the local reality elements in a type of education aimed at overcoming poverty.

The program provides an answer to the question: "What must the rural teacher know, in order to transmit something fundamental to the students? In order to overcome poverty, BERUM has collected and processed the most significant conceptual advances of the world summits on the subject (like for instance: the DELORS Report, UNESCO). Then, it has applied them to the design of a new education model for the sustainable development, with a strong ethical component.

Interandes, Corporation for Sustainable Development
Mr. Conrado Surber Devoto, Director
190 Santa María Ave
Miraflores, Lima 16 PERU
511 222 4300
postmaster@interandes.com or interandes@swissworld.com
interandes.swissworld.com

Peruvian Ministry of Education
General Departments of Education of Huánaco, Junín and Pasco
UNESCO
UNICEF
ILO
National Swiss Commission for UNESCO (Patronage, since August 2000)

Peru-Switzerland Counter-value Fund.

1998

It successfully passed several independent evaluations promoted by the financial source and there were no observations after three external financial and accounting audits. (1999) The Inter American Bank of Development qualifies BERUM as a "transformation of traditional educational paradigms". (1999) Award to the entrepreneur-like creativity in the category of Public Management, given by UPC, Indecopi, "El Comercio", Radio program of Peru and CONFIEP. (2000) The World Bank's Global Development Network announces that the program has been considered within the 10 semifinalists out of 300 projects presented at a worldwide level, at the GDN 's Award Most Innovative Development Project.