Rural students return to school; Projects to clean and protect waterways; Kids can take mom’s apellido; Cojitambo women use local materials for pottery

Lunes, 22/11/2021

Hola, Todos –

Actividades –
Nada.

Titular –

Aulas y pupitres listos para hoy (Classrooms and desks ready for today) – Students in technical and rural high schools return to clases presenciales (face-to-face classes – your phrase for the day – memorize this one because I will be using it) today. This time it will not be a partial return or with limited occupation, but is obligatory for 100% of the students, teachers and administrative personnel. Ministerio de Educación data says that nationally, 402,309 students will return to their classrooms with 121,082 to Bachillerato Rural and 281,227 to Bachillerato Técnico. In Zone 6 (Azuay, Cañar & Morona Santiago, the numbers are 31,400 total with 13,290 rural and 18,128 technical high school students returning to 82 schools.

Clean-up mingas were held at local schools in preparation for the resumption of in-person classes. (El Mercurio)

María Brow, Ministra de Educación, said the decision was made for these students to return first since rural students are those who have the most difficulty connecting to the internet with the fewest students attending virtual and semipresencial classes. The Bachillerato Técnico students are lagging behind because they need to get back in their laboratories and work centers to not fall behind. The level of contagions in schools is also very low with 31 cases in the 675,193 students (.004%) who were in semipresencial schools. Nationally, there were 5 cases or .006% among the 80,570 teachers who returned to semipresencial classes. The Zone 6 Coordinador de Educación said there were zero Covid cases among students and teachers in Azuay, Cañar y Morona Santiago. Another factor is the level of vaccinations. In order for children under 11 to return to class, there should be an 85% general level of vaccination in the canton and if this is not met, the analysis will take into account the age range, and if the school itself meets this percentage.

All students should be back in classrooms by 17/1/2022 with no schools keeping virtual or semipresencial classes. Students with health or personal reasons for not wanting to return to class will be transferred to 2 virtual schools which will be created in the country – one for the Sierra and the other for the coast. <I think kids are eager to get back to school to see their friends and classmates and be more normal again. And that’s not counting how happy parents who have been homeschooling will be.>

Cuenca –

Minga une a comunidad educativa (Minga unites the educational community) – The Unidad Educativa República del Ecuador (UERE), one of the largest public schools in Cuenca with about 1,250 students, held a minga in which teachers, parents, students and directors turned out last weekend. They all helped get the school ready for the students to come back to class including painting classrooms, cleaning the facility and furniture, and cleaning the common spaces. <I don’t think you could do that in the US because what if a parent inhaled paint fumes, got dizzy and called their lawyer?>

Reconocen trabajo de artesanos cuencanos (Cuenca’s artisans’ work recognized) – The City of Cuenca acknowledged the work of artesans in different fields to commemorate the first anniversary of the city’s being declared a “Ciudad Mundial de la Artesanía” (World Crafts City) by the Consejo Mundial de Artesanías on 17/11/2020. Mayor Palacios said that are 10 areas of crafts including blacksmithing, goldsmithing,, tinsmithing, textiles and embroidery, saddlery, wood carving, marble and stone masonry, and pottery.

Plan para salvar las quebradas se pone en marcha (Plan to save the creeks gets under way) – The Sociedad Alemana para la Cooperación Internacional (GIZ), through its sustainable cities laboratories, is working to design a pilot project to manage a creek that can be replicated on an urban scale. Creeks in Cuenca are used to dispose of waste water, garbage, debris, tires and dead animals in bags, but are not valued for their role in infrastructure. GIZ selected Sirio Persea, a consultant firm with offices in Cuenca and Medellin, and the Shishín creek in Baños as a base for their research which will start with learning the state of the creeks. Daniel Tello, architect and director of the consulting company, said that each creek has its own characteristics, but when humans enter the picture, the contamination is very similar. In the urban perimeter of Cuenca there are some 200 creeks that serve as a venting system or the infrastructure that regulates the force of the water. When the creeks are invaded by home construction, clandestine slaughter houses or agricultural encroachment, problems such as flooding and slides start to occur. The consultants visited the creek last sábado with people living in the area, and plan to present results of the plan in febrero, 2022.

Control de aguas hervidas será el primer paso (Control of waste water will be the first step) – Before the studies start on the Shishín creek, the Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado (GAD – Decentralized Autonomous Government ) in Baños is undertaking projects for the population to not continue to pollute its waters. It has removed tons of garbage, but the problem that persists is that wastewater winds up in the creek for lack of sewer systems, The GAD has signed an agreement with the U. of Cuenca and the Universidad Católica to design sustainable treatment systems for domestic wastewater on a pilot scale and for single family systems. <Is installing a septic tank & leach field even possible in mountainous terrain?>

Apellido materno puede ir primero (Mother’s last name may come first) – A law passed in 2016 allows parents to decide which last name they want to come first for their child, either the mother’s or the father’s, when they register the child at the Registro Civil. Whatever is selected for the first child, the subsequent children will take the same name order. If there is only one parent, the law will assign the name of the parent who registers the child and repeats the process two times. For children of foreign parents, without considering their migratory status, the child’s last names will be assigned according to the law of the country of the parent who registers the child. In Azuay, an average of 3 couples a year opt to place the maternal surname first. <I’m assuming you all know the convention of the double surnames where the father’s comes first and the mother’s second. I don’t know what it looks like when the mother takes her husband’s name in the de _____ format.>

Region –

Mujeres “reinventan” artes de Cojitambo (Women “reinvent” the arts of Cojitambo) – When the lockdown for the pandemic started, 3 women, Blanca Urgilés and her two daughters, Martha and Carmen Fajardo, started using stones and gravel from the Burgay and Santa Bárbara rivers to make flower pots. They use a passageway between their kitchen and bedrooms as their studio and sell from the front of their house which is on the Azogues-Cojitambo highway about 600 meters from the parish seat of Cojitambo. The workshop started when one of the women did some remodeling work and the mother was sitting on the corner of the project playing with the construction concrete and stones to make pots. Now they work from 8-17:00. Cojitambo is noted for its rock quarries which are the source of stone to make many different objects which are nationally recognized.

Descuentos y compras –

Mirasol & Metrocar – Chevy Tracker Turbo MY22 – free preventive maintenance for limited time – offer valid from 15/11-31/12/2021.

Automekano – 2022 DFSK 560, 3 rows of seats – 15% off from $23,490 to $19,990 – Av. España 10-35, 100 m. from airport -WhatsApp 096 765 0100 – www.automekano.com.

And that’s all for today so hasta ? –

Jeanne
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Editor’s note: Jeanne’s Periodico is a translated digest of news from the Cuenca daily newspaper El Mercurio. If details, such as event dates and times, do not appear in the translation, they did not appear in the newspaper (please don’t ask her for them). The text between the carrots, or guillemets (< … >), is Jeanne’s personal opinion and not part of the news translation.