Starting Monday, April 4th, Friends of Fe y Alegría in the United States launched a fundraising campaign, highlighting the need to have safe and appropriate learning spaces to ensure brighter futures for Fe y Alegría students in Latin America and the Caribbean. The “Safe Schools, Brighter Futures” campaign aims to support a total of seven micro-projects in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

Appropriate learning spaces in formal and non-formal classrooms are crucial to ensuring quality and inclusive education. While we have seen many advances in increasing education access for the 124 million children and youth currently out of school, the quality and inclusion of the education they receive once they make it to the classroom is often poor due to the learning spaces in which their education is offered. As a result, many do not complete their education.

Fe y Alegría bases its quality education approach taking into account not only academic results, curriculum and learning processes but also quality conditions in matters of safe and healthy environments.

The learning process needs to be developed in appropriate conditions with the adequate infraestructures to prevent from dropout and violence; offering the proper material conditions such as chairs and blackboards but also classrooms, lunchrooms and bathrooms to encourage and preserve hygienic conditions and healthy daily life routines.

With each project in this campaign, Fe y Alegría will improve and restore classroom spaces and materials to be able to offer better learning conditions for its students, thus offering them a better and brighter future.

Friends of Fe y Alegría in the United States will be launching this campaign through social networks, using the hash tag #FyASafeSchools. We invite you to join this campaign and defend the right to a quality education in safe and appropriate learning spaces.