Pumapungo Museum gets educational

The Pumapungo Museum on Calle Larga program aims at making its exhibitions more engaging for school children.

A new program sponsored by the national Ministry of Culture is training 50 University of Cuenca students to work as volunteer guides and workshop  coordinators for area school children.

According to Peter Carter, an official with the national Prometheus program to improve education, says the new program will replace the current approach of museum visits for school children. “We want to replace the traditional two-hour walk-through with something more hands-on for the children,” he says. “Next year, we will have more focused visits to specific exhibits and will add workshops in special areas.”

Worshops, which will be four hours each, will cover such subjects as hunting and fire-making, Canari and Incan ceramics, Canari and Incan cooking and agricultural practices, traditional fabrics, and ancestral rituals. In addition to University of Cuenca students, workshops will be led by professional archeologists and historians.

“We want the students to have fun,” says Carter. “We don’t want them to get bored, which is the case for many of them now. Most of all, we want to get them excited about history and to take pride in our culture.”

Carter says the new program will begin in early 2014.