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Formabiap
NABUUR
ETVO
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COPPIP
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AIDESEP
Organisation
Formabiap is situated in the heart of the Amazon in Iquitos, Peru. It is an organisation, which trains indigenous teachers to provide bilingual education at primary school level and wants to extend this to the high school level as well.
In the last decades the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon have been losing their language and cultural identity rapidly. Education in Spanish only has contributed greatly to this process. This kind of education estranges indigenous children from community life. It doesn’t teach them to live in harmony with their environment and their own people. And it teaches them too little Spanish and other skills to be successful in Peruvian’s mixed society. Estranged from their own culture young people leave their communities to become second rate citizens elsewhere: jobless, homeless, prone to crime and drugs.
The local organization FORMABIAP trains indigenous teachers to provide bilingual education. Bilingual education gives the children a strong sense of identity and a keen awareness of environmental and social problems. Only bilingual education prepares the children successfully for life in their communities and Peruvian society. The program is the only of its kind in Peru. All the other programmes for teacher education are governmental. The Peruvian government has approved the program for primary school teachers. However, the high school program has not been approved as an official educational programme. One of the reasons for this is thought to be the government's continuing attitude in monoculturising Peru instead of accepting its diversity. Already 10 ethnical groups in Peru have vanished and another 13 groups are under the threat of extinction.
FORMABIAP receives no financial support from the government and is dependent on donations. In order to safeguard the continuity of the organisation and its bilingual teaching programs, FORMABIAP wants to explore new income sources. For instance by exploiting the value of its buildings, personnel and knowledge. There are a lot of ideas and resources but work needs to be done in order to commercialise them.
For more information on Formabiap please read this article or choose one of the links on this page.
