Teach English in Rural School in Peru

Project At A Glance

Location: Cusco and Urubamba Start point: Cusco End Point: Cusco Duration: 2-12 weeks Hours: 20 hours per week Food: Local meals (3 times a day) Room: Homebase or host family Date: First and Third Monday of each month

Project Summary

Schools in Peru are drastically underfunded. In the rural schools, English, art and physical Education are required subjects, but are not available due to lack of funding and staff. In some schools, these courses may be taught but at a very low skill level as the teachers are not qualified to teach the courses. Peru needs volunteers to teach these important but often overlooked subjects of art, computer skills, physical education and English.

Peruvian children are falling behind their global counterparts and rural schools in Peru are in the worst shape. The children of Peru want to learn and improve their lives, but the school system is challenged. Volunteer to teach children in Peru - interject a passion and love for learning into their lives!

Skills/Qualifications Needed

Beginner to intermediate knowledge of Spanish is preferred (not mandatory). If you cannot speak Spanish, we suggest you enroll in our Spanish language course to make your stay more rewarding – both for you and for the children you are helping. There are no specific qualifications needed to join IFRE's volunteer teaching projects in Peru. Dress code is required in the schools (no shorts or sleeveless shirts) and volunteers must be physically presentable (no excessive tattoos or piercings). Volunteers are expected to be reliable, flexible and patient and strive to be good role models for the children.

Volunteer Responsibilities

Volunteer teachers in Peru usually teach English; however, other subjects like art, computer skills or physical education may also require support. We place volunteers in public or private schools to teach basic English (grammar and conversational) skills for about 2-3 hours/day (six days a week). Students are aged 6 to 13-years-old. Classes are large. Schools often request volunteer support with extra-curricular activities in addition to teaching hours.

Room/Food/Supervision

Most volunteers placed in Cusco projects stay at our home base – a permanent home set aside for international volunteers and manned with a local staff. Our home base provides a same-gender shared room and shared bathroom with running hot water and a “western” style toilet. Volunteers will have the ability to do laundry at the home base. Volunteers receive three prepared meals per day. If volunteers will be out of the house during lunch hour, volunteers can request a lunch "to go" that volunteers can take with volunteers or eat out. Meals are cuisine, which is traditional to Peru.

Our Cusco home base is located in the center of beautiful Cusco city. Most of our volunteers’ projects are located within 2-5 miles of the home base. Therefore, volunteers can simply walk to their projects or take a local taxi. Most necessary services for travelers are located within 2 km of the homebase: internet cafés, restaurants and grocery stores.

Occasionally, depending on volunteer traffic, available projects or distance to a volunteer’s assigned project, we may also place our volunteers with carefully pre-screened host families. Our host families are socially respected and experienced hosts of international volunteers. They have strong interest in our volunteers’ safety and well-being and demonstrate this with caution and care. In most host family situations, volunteers will share a room with another volunteer of the same gender. Volunteers receive three meals a day. Our host families do not offer laundry services, but some will happily take up the task for a small fee. This is up to volunteers to negotiate upon arrival. If volunteers choose to do their own laundry, most families are happy to let volunteers use their washbasins where volunteers wash by hand then line-dry their clothes.

Throughout the volunteer project, our local staff stays in contact with volunteers either with face-to-face visits or via email/telephone. Volunteers are always welcome at the local office in Cusco. If project placement is local, we request that volunteers stop by the office once a week to keep us posted on how they are doing with their home stay and project. If project placement is very far, then our local staff members maintain communication by either email and/or phone and try to visit every 2-4 weeks if possible.