Most of the boys are poor. Those who can afford to finish the 11 years of education (six in primary and five in secondary school) provided by the state count themselves lucky.
Many children cannot afford even the small costs of books, school supplies, a uniform, and shoes. Some must work to feed themselves and their families. Many of the boys who try out for the Alianza Lima juvenile program have not finished secondary school.
Diestro wanted to provide something for the children who had nowhere to go but the streets. Some couldn't play soccer well, but still they wanted to be part of something like the soccer club. She went to her bosses at the Alianza Lima club and proposed they establish Alianza groups in the outlying "new towns" (shantytowns) around Lima, using the Alianza spirit to help young people from poor backgrounds develop themselves.
Diestro and a group of aspiring soccer stars in the Club Alianza Lima stadium in La Victoria, Peru
With support from Alianza and an Ashoka Fellowship in 1996, Diestro began to form Alianza clubs that were more than sports clubs – they helped reinforce what children were learning at school. Diestro found that children often needed help with homework that their parents could not provide for a variety of reasons: they were absent, worked jobs with late hours, or had little formal education.
One of the areas Diestro targeted was Villa El Salvador, an city on the outskirts of Lima that includes 340,000 people who live below the poverty line, many in newly settled areas built on the sands stretching south of Lima. In districts like Villa El Salvador, "there are no places for kids to play, except for the streets," Diestro said.
Villa El Salvador's municipal government built a basic sports complex for the School for Sports and Life, but gave no other support. "The municipal governments provide the physical space for us – they set aside a piece of land, set up a minimal sports complex for us, and make the cement courts on which to play volley ball, basketball, and 'fulbito'," Diestro said. "They provide the space and physical structure."
"We have to change the loser mentality"
Alianza then sends out the call to a neighborhood to come play sports, and kids – many of them – show up. The program begins with sports, and then begins to include other activities. "Snacks are very important," Diestro notes. "Every day we try to have fruit, a drink, and a sandwich. The kids burn up energy that their families are not going to be able to replace."
Playing ball in Villa El Salvador with a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. The green wetlands area in the background contrasts sharply with the coastal desert
The School for Sports and Life programs enroll children between the ages of 6 and 15. Some programs accept only boys, while others enroll boys and girls. The program in Villa El Salvador has enrolled 640 boys and girls and also provides health services and a small library.
"Beyond physical and technical training for a sport, we work on educational and general development, with emphasis on social and cultural development," Diestro said. "In addition to providing academic reinforcement and conducting periodic evaluations of school performance by educators and psychologists, we try to widen their cultural knowledge with continuous information on subjects that contribute to health, morals and values, formation of character, building self-esteem, and other aptitudes and attitudes for life, especially resilience. We have to change the loser mentality.
"There are meetings to learn conflict resolution at all levels throughout the program, and handled according to the age of the children," Diestro said. "They learn that there is an alternative to violence, and to use the language of communication to resolve problems instead of force. We also try to teach them about their own reality, according to their age; about valuing themselves; and we work on developing leaders."
The children develop basic occupational skills by learning handcrafts, silk-screening (tee shirts), computer skills, and art and music, including dance and theater. They learn to play traditional instruments including the guitar, flute, panpipes, drums and cajón, which translates literally to "drawer" or "box," which is what this wooden instrument resembles – the player sits on top and plays it like a drum with his hands, providing the rhythm in Afro-Peruvian music.
The basic sports complex built by the municipal government of Villa El Salvador. The logo of Club Alianza Lima's youth program is visible, painted on the wall in the back, right.
The School for Sports and Life programs are staffed by paid professionals and volunteers. "It's hard to find professional teachers with a popular vision," Diestro said. "Most of them have a vertical outlook."
Older children help younger ones at all levels. Both the older and younger children learn from this experience, and this way they form special bonds.
Young people who have outgrown the program are returning as promoters who work with the children, helping them as they themselves were helped. There is no money to pay these young volunteers, although the program sometimes can pay their bus fare or make a gift of sneakers or a pair of pants.
Alianza Lima team members maintain a high profile throughout the program in all its locations, attending important holiday fairs and prize days – sometimes putting in surprise appearances. Other prominent sports figures, such as the tennis star Jaime Yzaga, also participate.
Welcoming the Excluded
The School for Sports and Life provides a form of reconciliation for children who have felt excluded by the public schools, Diestro said. Many of these children are very poor, and yet they are not included in government statistics, so they are not included in the programs for the impoverished, Diestro said.
"Public school is a way of excluding while including," she said. The public schools subtly "include and exclude at the same time, excluding a child because he does not know, or does not learn when it is not his fault but the fault of the system."
Public schools "give the kids a lot of homework, but do not explain to them what they want or expect from them," she continued. "A lot of these kids have had to repeat the year; they become discouraged and drop out. They feel that the schools are not for them."
"For many, it is the opportunity of their lives"
The presence of voluntary teachers, many of whom are young people from the area, helps make this program a reconciliation for students who felt excluded from the public schools. The students gain a chance to learn and show what they are capable of.
"Sometimes it is the first time they have ever felt capable of doing anything," Diestro said. "For many, it is the opportunity of their lives. This is the real value of the program: they feel better about themselves.
There is no selection process for the sports school – no one is excluded. Children with behavioral problems receive special attention and cease to be behavioral problems when they become busy in activities that they enjoy and begin to feel better about themselves.
Cheering section: a family in Villa El Salvador sits in front of their home, watching their son and brother play soccer in the School for Sports and Life. They are sitting on sand-filled plastic burlap bags, many of which are used to help control the shifting sands on which they live
"For many of them, it is probably the first time in their lives anyone has listened to them, valued them, received their problems, and recognized them as a person. Their grades usually improve. When other people show interest in them and in their schoolwork, it begins to have meaning and they become more interested."
"Some of the students have gone on to university," Diestro said. "One of the first to participate in our program has now finished university and has come back to work with us.
"For most of the kids, the real results will be seen years down the line. The program is young still, so it is hard to judge results."
Creating New Families
The first contact with kids is made through their love of soccer and their desire to be part of Alianza Lima. But to encourage learning, it is crucial that the staff creates a caring atmosphere throughout the program that makes them feel recognized and valued as individuals.
Teachers' character is at least as important as what they teach. They need to provide support that parents, often through no fault of their own, are unable to fill. Building self-esteem and positive identity are the main underlying concerns throughout the project.
"Children need to be in a place where they sense they are loved, received, welcomed, always have contact, and are known by name," Diestro said. "This gives them another relationship when their families are in crisis. Many bring their grades to us before they take them home. We become an important point of reference for them. They respond to the warmth they feel from the people who work with them."
Diestro leads a training workshop for teachers. The banner says, "Learning in order to teach." A poster behind Diestro reads "Alianza Lima, we win a championship, we win a country."
Psychological and emotional skills are important criteria when selecting personnel, Diestro said. "When we choose people to work in our program, before we look for any kind of technical qualifications they might have, we look for a quality of warmth, and of sensitivity to children's emotional needs. That is where the crisis of our times lies – in the bonds, affective ties, and in relationships. Many experts have talked about the necessity of emotional ties. In this project, we are the children's 'new families'."
Diestro is skilled at recognizing personal talents and skills. Her interest in people is immediate and personal; she gives her entire attention and listens intently in a way that makes people feel special. This is part of her rapport with the kids, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences, most of whom have a very low opinion of themselves. Diestro has a special gift for bringing out a person's positive side – even the chivalrous side of a delinquent teenager.
Diestro herself comes from a poor background. Her deep desire to help build her country and help people develop and use their talents stems from her family upbringing and a Jesuit education that taught her service to others and the importance of doing something well.
Using Drama When Things Get Sticky
She began her career 22 years ago, working in public and community health programs that trained leaders, especially women, to assume neighborhood leadership. Diestro was part of "a large group of young professionals who believed there was a lot of talent in this country among the poorer populations," she said. "We were trying to participate in building up the country, working in popular education with people, mostly women and children, in the marginal areas of Lima."
However, during the 1980s and into the mid-'90s, the Sendero Luminoso Maoist group began a spree of terror that eventually killed 26,000
people, most of them poor; many of them peasants in mountain communities. "For the first time in my life I had to take an 'indoor' job because it was too dangerous to work in the marginal areas of Lima," she said. For three years, Diestro worked for church-sponsored programs in one of Peru's major prisons, and she worked in soup kitchens. In 1996, she was hired to be a social worker by the Alianza Lima soccer club.
Diestro is effervescent, compassionate and energetic, with a strong streak of common sense. Her sense of humor and cheerful attitude have probably helped the project succeed as much as her talent for organizing.
She has needed patience and perseverance to surmount the hurdles and multitude of details involved in working with the government, and to
handle the setbacks and compromises involved in launching a program of this scale in a heavily bureaucratic country. Even after Diestro has invested substantial energy, time, organization, patience and much legwork to start a project, the political winds can turn fickle. For example, a sudden change of mayor in one district halted a program just as it was getting underway.
Diestro has resorted to creative and dramatic tactics when things get sticky. After a municipal government began dragging its feet on completing promised cement playing courts, she carried a large bag of broken glass that she had picked out of the sand at the site – formerly a garbage dump – and dumped it on their board meeting table to show exactly why the cement platform was required.
Building an Expanding Network
Diestro's dream is to create an extensive network of School for Sports and Life programs. She hopes the momentum of energy from program alumni will keep the program going and spreading until they become self-sustaining and sufficiently institutionalized to receive government support so they are accessible to all the children who need them.
In addition to the program in Villa El Salvador, there is a group of 160 boys and girls that concentrates on soccer and volleyball in the Chincha Valley, a wide river valley that serves as an important agricultural center, two hours south from Lima on the Pan-American Highway. In Pisco, half an hour farther south of Chincha, there is a soccer program for some 70 boys.
Snack time for one of the children's teams in Chincha. Educational activities and meetings take place in this building and patio, provided by the local municipal goverment
In Trujillo, a city in northern Peru, a program called Niño Intimo ("Child of the Alianza Family") serves some 75 boys. In the Pamplona Alta section of San Juan de Miraflores, a district adjacent to Villa El Salvador, a program called Semillero (literally "seed nursery" or "seed bed") Churre Hinostroza (the name of a captain of the Alianza Lima team) has enrolled 120 boys and also specializes in health.
Diestro is the link that binds these programs. While she receives support from Alianza, Diestro provides the model and launches new projects with local leaders.
A key challenge is to create a stronger network linking these programs, so that teams can travel to play against each other. The programs in Pisco and Chincha are geographically close enough to do this, but thus far the cost of transporting teams to and from Lima has been prohibitive.
Successful Adaptation is the Key
The School for Sports and Life is being replicated in other countries by soccer stars in Brazil (Raí), Chile (Ivan Zamorano) and Argentina,
using the program as a model. As the program spreads, the idea of a dynamic point of contact must be adapted to the interests and needs of varying populations.
For example, in one case Diestro adapted the program to the demands and needs of parents. "In Villa El Salvador, we have a group of mothers who started an aerobics group twice a week," she said. "They discovered they felt different, healthier, had better coordination. Their mood and behavior improved; they have more self-esteem. They have all sorts of new ideas; they enjoy the sense of community and feeling capable; now they have started a jewelry making class. So we are including adults in the process. It is important that they feel capable, feel they can do something. They suffer less tension. Sports give people space to generate better relationships."
Diestro has learned to adapt the program to varying cultural conditions. Eighteen members of the current Alianza Lima team are from the region of El Carmen, a town in the Chincha Valley that is the center of "black" (their term) culture, especially the famous Afro-Peruvian music and dancing that holds an important place in Peruvian culture and is a prominent feature of the entertainment world. The School for Sports and Life program in the Chincha valley addresses black identity, which needs reinforcing, and provides resources to support black culture.
A young team in Chincha Valley receives some last-minute advice
Diestro's hopes her efforts to support education and build the self-esteem of young people will have a ripple effect that helps Peru. "This country is for everybody," she said. "What young people learn from sports about identity and community will contribute to building up the country."
Needs:
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Sports equipment:
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- soccer and volley balls,
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- soccer shoes and sneakers, sizes 36 to 42
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- sport clothes (tee shirts and shorts), sizes medium and large
- Educational materials:
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- composition books
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- white bond paper
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- colored papers
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- poster board
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- pencils
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- art materials
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- materials for crafts
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- books, all kinds: especially reference books (can be used ), encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, informational, technological, sports, literature
- Medicines:
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- for skin infections
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- vitamins, for prevention of respiratory infections
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- digestive aids
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- gauze
- Musical instruments:
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- quenas [Andean flutes]
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- panpipes
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- guitars
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- cajón [box-like drum]
Girls proudly display the schoolbags and
jewelry they made in craft workshops
Contact:
Sara Diestro Cabanillas
Asociacion Civil Pro Niño Intimo
Av. General Silva 450 - San Antonio De Miraflores
Lima . 18 . Peru
Geremias Iadicicco
Correo Central
Villa El Salvador
Lima . 42 . Peru
Email: sdiestro@yahoo.com
Freda Wolf de Romero was born in Aurora, Illinois. She studied anthropology at Barnard College (Columbia University) and Cornell University and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Lima. She has an abiding desire to figure out why people do what they do and to further understanding through interpretation. Coming from an amalgam of North American cultures, her special interests encompass Peruvian national culture, traditional Andean culture, and especially the interface of psychology and culture. She is married to a Peruvian dairy farmer, has two sons and has lives in Peru for more than 25 years. She has written for local English-language magazines in Lima and is currently working on a novel and a book on Peruvian national culture.
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"Field sports are a way of building up the country, because in sports children cease to be invisible," Sarah Diestro says
Diestro and friends in the city of Villa El Salvador
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