Escuela Modelo

In our view, education is the key to sustainable development in Peru, where despite strong macroeconomic growth, a large share of the population still earns its livelihood in the informal sector.

In March 2006, the “Escuela Modelo en la Amazonía,” an elementary school offering a contemporary education contextualized to the Amazonian environment, opened its doors. In the 2025 school year it operates nine classes, three kindergarten groups plus grades 1 through 6, with a total enrollment of roughly 214 pupils.

On a two-hectare site on the outskirts of Yurimaguas, we have built an infrastructure using traditional construction methods:

• Eight wooden school pavilions with palm-leaf roofs

• Two-part main building (“Casa Madre”) housing the school office, library, staff room, storeroom and the janitor’s apartment

• Multi-purpose pavilion with a round palm-leaf roof and a semicircular grandstand

• Sanitary block with five toilets, two showers and an outdoor washing trough (for primary classes)

• Sanitary block with four toilets, one shower and an outdoor washing trough (for kindergarten)

• Groundwater well (8 m deep, 2.5 m in diameter) with pumping station

• Elevated water tank serving as a reservoir

• Two biological wastewater-treatment modules (solid separation and composting; grey-water treatment via a planted sand filter)

• 95-metre boundary wall along the roadside, with an entrance gate

• Workshop building that also serves as a preschool classroom for children aged three and above

Great importance is placed on close cooperation with the local authorities. The school, together with its independent concept and curriculum is officially recognized by the regional government, which also funds the teachers’ basic salaries.

The school’s primary goal is to develop and pilot new educational content, thereby driving reforms in the public school system. The emphasis is on educational quality rather than simply providing basic schooling. The “Escuela Modelo en la Amazonía” is not a private institution: minimal school fees are charged and the student body is drawn from diverse sectors of the population., and its students come from a broad range of social backgrounds.

At the end of December 2014, EDA-Yurimaguas and the local school authority (UGELAA) signed a new cooperation agreement with a minimum term of ten years, which entered into force on 1 January 2015. In March 2025, the agreement was renewed for a further five years, giving the continued operation of the Escuela Modelo en la Amazonía a solid foundation.