For many of us, Ecuador Mi País (EmiP) is a vehicle to make a difference in a country we love. Ecuador is a small country, moving at its own pace towards “development”. A beautiful country full of contrasts and inequality; education is one of the most obvious areas where this inequality manifests itself. Education is an area where we believe we can make a difference; an area where we must make a difference.

Even though technically education is a constitutional right, quality access is limited to only a small percentage of the population. Furthermore, access to higher education becomes even more difficult and the quality lags behind other countries in the region, particularly in the public arena. As we have witnessed through many of the projects we are currently involved in, rural schools and universities have monumental deficiencies and fail to provide students with the tools needed to think creatively and become active contributors to the country’s advancement.

The task of changing education in Ecuador is monumental. It might seem that volunteering to combat such a daunting problem is an exercise in futility. It sounds utopist. However, members of EMiP volunteer and hope you volunteer because it won’t just help improve the educational system, but in the process it will also change you. When you with your heart, to work passionately towards an unselfish goal, to grasp others people needs as your own, you grow as a person. We believe it is vital for us as human beings to dream beyond our reality, to push our creativity towards finding new solutions to old problems, to train our minds and hearts to add value to the important things in life, and to put our hands to work. Once this is achieved we provide the tools to begin to lay bricks on a foundation for a better world. In a recent presentation, the Dalai Lama said that we all must exercise our compassion, as we do our muscles. Idealistic initiatives are high class gyms for our soul.

We have been volunteering for EmiP for several years and we have, with your help, supported the education of over 90 students per year. We are convinced that we can and we will make a bigger difference in the future. We are continuously planning for our next step. We want to design a project that will change the lives of thousands of people. We want to invite you to dream with us. Dream about a large group of people with a strong bond amongst them working for a fair and just cause, dream of a better Ecuador, dream of a way to help people realize their own dreams. Make it happen. EmiP needs your dreams, your actions and your talent. Volunteer. Join us.

Some may call me over confident, extreme optimistic, maybe even naive, but see, I like my optimism. This optimism deeply rooted in my nature is what makes me believe in many things, amongst them, the ideal of Ecuador Mi Pais.  

Sometime ago, while starting to build the dream of Ecuador Mi Pais, I was asked why would I care for others instead of dedicating my full time and energy to care for my family and those who are really part of my world? Why would I do something that I am not required to do, instead of leaving it all to those who are supposed to be working “for the people”, i.e. the government? Well, the thing is, I want to believe that if we decide to act, our hand may influence and impact the near future of many in a great way. So, I believe it is from all of us that little by little, something bigger may be built. After all, criticizing poor government performance, poor political strategies to win followers, etc, has not given the desired results either, as to correct the failures we complain about. 

And yes, most times I read or listen to the news I also have a feeling of disappointment, as it happens to many, but I have chosen to believe that those bad news are starting points for what can be transformed in an inspiring journey. So, in trying to overcome disappointment when reading the newspaper and discouragement of those who do not support our cause – or for what matters, any cause – I find that just as there is so much negative information to discourage us from fighting the good fight and investing our time to favor others (political crisis, economic crisis, natural disasters, pandemic viruses and some other really bad news), if we look a little beyond what the headlines say, we can find so many encouraging and inspiring stories that will awake the desire to keep believing and to give our best.  Take for example, the great artists singing for the fight against poverty (see http://www.playingforchange.com/ very nice videos) , or those who actually pay just to get the opportunity to volunteer at a campaign in a third world country (see http://www.i-to-i.com/), or those fighting for the rights of those more vulnerable (see http://www.amnestyusa.org, Volunteer Leadership Opportunities), and so the list goes on and on full of people donating their time, their money, their knowledge. So I smile. I smile because there is still people who have faith in humanity and I want to be like them. I want to help make a difference through Ecuador Mi Pais.  

Now here we are, we may not have great voices to sing for a change or enough political influence to alter the course of government decisions, but we are concerned about the future, and that concern leads us to act in support of what we believe.  And the truth is that each one of us can give a little something to help bring the change we need, and I keep finding people who wants to give it all, so my faith remains intact. 

Despite discouraging news, despite bad economies, despite the lack of free time, I keep believing in the ever lasting generosity of people who give as much as they can. I keep believing that if we put our time, our ideas, our courage, the generations to come will find a better world to live in.  A place where people will have their basic needs as human beings satisfied, and that amongst those, education will be one, to teach children to think, to dream, to create, to build a better country for everyone around them. I keep believing that volunteering may be the key to transforming the future of a society or of a country as a whole. This is the dream that makes me believe in Ecuador Mi Pais and that keeps me going, even though the direct beneficiaries are not part of my family and even though I am not required to volunteer.

Vanessa Bustamante

Handling all the issues related to the Projects VP for the past three years has been a wonderful experience for me.  During that time, I have never been able to go to Ecuador to meet our scholarship holders or the people who run the different projects we support.  Although I have only been able to contact them by e-mail and sometimes by phone, even that brief contact has been a fulfilling experience.

This time working with Ecuador Mi Pais, has given me hope that things will always get better, even though they seem very tough at times.  This renewed hope definitively comes from the dedication that I can see in the kids who receive our support and are able to develop their skills at school every day.  It also comes from knowing all the dedicated people who work very hard trying to change the destiny of a number of children who hope education will provide them a way out of the circle of poverty and despair that their parents have gone through.  This includes each one of you, our supporters, who although so far away from a country that you hardly ever hear about, are there for those children who desperately need you.  Those Ecuadorians who left their country for one reason or another and still care about the future of kids they have never met and probably never will.  I wish I could have the time and unlimited space in this article to let you know about each one of the children, their stories, and the hard situation they face to go to school every day.  But most important, I wish I could tell you about their increased faith in themselves knowing someone far away cares about their future and believes they can succeed.  Their little thank you notes are specially filled with gratitude and pride over their achievements and they are always hoping and wondering if we will continue to support them.  We always tell them we are not doing this for charity, and that we see this as an investment towards a better future for our country and that makes them feel very important.

We have certainly increased the number of kids we are supporting and are actually helping more than 95 kids go to school every year and also making sure their parents understand the importance of letting them do so.  The current financial situation is forcing us to be a bit more cautious this year and unfortunately, we will not be increasing the number of scholarships for next year but we will certainly maintain the ones we have committed to so far.

I believe that our biggest challenge is yet to come; we have reached a point where we need to dream big and give shape to a larger and more ambitious project that will allow us to make significant changes to education in Ecuador.  This will require a tremendous effort since we will have to work together with other organizations having different strengths and experience; but we believe this is the right time to do it.  If you are interested in being a part of this dream and making a contribution to this effort, please, contact us.  We certainly could use some help and different points of view are always welcome since they promote a healthy discussion.

I definitely feel very lucky that I have had the opportunity to help in this organization and have been able to see it grow throughout the years.  I know life changes very rapidly and you never know if you will be doing the exact same thing one year from now.  But do I know for certain that I have grown both spiritually and emotionally as a result of this work that we have been doing.  I hope in the future more of our members will want to participate in a more active way to make sure our efforts continue in behalf of the children.  I am sure that just like me, they will never regret the time they share with this organization.

Gaby Viteri

When I first started as a volunteer for Ecuador Mi País I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with my life, with my work, and with my skills. My paid job at the time was completely boring, meaningless, monotonous, but paid the bills. I knew I needed a challenge. I knew I needed a change, but my monthly paycheck was like an intravenous needle that was barely keeping me alive drop by drop without letting me live fully. When I found Ecuador Mi País I knew I found the solution. Working for this Organization would allow me to have the excitement of taking decisions, have work challenges, find new co-workers, new friends, and help people with my work; thus changing my life and the world in the process.

The options when I first joined the Organizations were not much, but I knew that the organization needed a presence in the Internet. I had some technical skills working with databases, utility programs, and had done my thesis for my MBA in electronic commerce, so I had an idea about how websites work, but I had never done one in my life. Anyway, that was my challenge! I signed up to create the first website of the Organization and to put it in the Internet. I have to admit that I was lucky, or as the famous writer Paulo Coelho puts it: “when you do things for the first time, the universe confabulates itself to let you succeed”.

We collected one dollar per person at the first meeting of the Organization and bought the domain. Later, Roberto Andrade came up with the first design of the website, and I had a friend that had a server, so I asked him if we could borrow some space to have our first website online. To make the story short, I got a copy of an html editor and not much later I was managing and maintaining the official website of the organization that was live to the world. It was like a dream come true. I had all the challenge that I needed and I felt that I was doing something meaningful for me and for the kids from Ecuador that cannot go to school because of lack of funds. A few months later we were able to collect donations through the website and were sending money to Ecuador to fund education projects.

Then, I got so interested in the work that I was doing for Ecuador Mi País that I decided that I needed to pursue a Masters in Information Systems. That is how I immediately applied, got accepted and enrolled for a Master ’s Degree at George Washington University and a few months later I got the opportunity to start my own company based on the new knowledge and skills that I had. Obviously I took that opportunity.

At that time, the economic depression came and my entire division at my paid work was closed, so I was laid off. However, Eruditos, the company that I just created was starting to sell and I got a scholarship at the University, so losing my job was completely uneventful. In fact, at last I had the feeling that I had been able to pull that intravenous needle from my body and I was starting to live freely and fully.

Bernardo Darquea

Early morning (even earlier because of the time change) on Sunday March 8th the board of Ecuador Mi Pais got together for our annual strategy meeting. We feel it is important to keep all of you donors, volunteers and supporters, informed of what we are doing as an organization and would like to share the results of our meeting as we recapped our activities from 2008 and laid out our proposals for 2009.

We kicked off with the President addressing the board regarding the accomplishments of 2008 and the vision for 2009. As is customary of our meetings the conversation soon digressed and we spent a great deal of time discussing the vision and long term objectives that we have for the organization. It was great to see everyone engaged and contributing thoughtfully to advance the conversation. The main points of discussion centered around the best way to further our objectives regarding education in Ecuador while promoting Ecuadorean culture and strengthening the community of Ecuadorians abroad.

After a lengthy discussion and some sandwiches, we delved into the presentations again starting with the cultural VP, which did a great job with slim resources this year, specifically with the Colada Morada and the the Film festival events. Speaking of events, please check out our website often to find out what events are coming up.

The Legal VP update and discussion was rather straightforward. We have now obtained all necessary permits to work as a non-profit organization in the Washington DC area (some legal nuance there) and in the next year we will focus our efforts on the Quito chapter and completing our incorporation as an organization in Ecuador.

Next, the Projects VP gave us an update on the status of our projects and how we fared compared to the previous year. On the aggregate the number of children who benefited from our scholarships has remained stable, but the distribution across projects and the total amount we donated has increased. We were all very encouraged by the results and are looking forward to even better numbers this year. In the interest of time we did not have a lengthy discussion on the new projects proposed (there were three of them) but we assure you that we will be tackling some new challenges in the near future. The proposals ranged from higher education to after-school sessions; we will probably share these projects in more detail in a later post.

Public Relations had a busy year. One of the more interesting things on the agenda was the involvement with the DC Network of Youth Organizations. We have effectively partnered up with the network over last year and look forward to sharing efforts in 2009. At this point we discussed the possibility of decoupling the work that PR does in promoting events from managing the communication with other organizations. At this point we went back to entertaining some suggestions for ways we could structure the organization to meet the our institutional objectives and operate more effectively. Given that we will be having elections for officers soon, we may not have the time to implement all these changes (or maybe this could be the best time?) but you should expect to see a more efficient and focused organization going forward.

Next we looked at the resources VP and were glad to see that donations have continued to increase. We discussed the challenges put forth by the recession we are living in and how to cope with them. This will undoubtfully be a tough year for all and we will need all the support we can get. The resources discussion ended with a call for more focused donation solicitations, especially from grants and institutional donations.

The Finance update really drove home the point of us needing more institutional donations and grants to be able to have a larger impact. For any of these applications we will need a pro-bono auditor to give us a hand auditing financial statements and would appreciate any contacts you, our supporters, may have.

The last presentation of the day was that if the Information systems VP, who got us all excited about the opportunities we have to connect better with our members and leverage our website to do so. Expect the website to be more dynamic with pictures, blog posts (like this one) and resources for you to volunteer.

Overall we had a very fruitful working Sunday, so expect more positive educational impact, some great events, and a much more focused and active organization. Thanks for your continued support.

Rodrigo

Eruditos, una empresa ecuatoriana que se dedica a fomentar la excelencia académica a través de sistemas de información que facilitan la comunicación entre las instituciones educativas, profesores, estudiantes, y padres de familia; nos ha donado una campaña publicitaria en su portal Web valorada en $1000 dólares, para promover la causa de nuestra Organización dentro del Ecuador.

Esta campaña publicitaria esta corriendo desde ya dentro del portal Web de Eruditos y confiamos en que será un medio primordial en la captación de nuevos miembros, reconocimiento del nombre de nuestra Organización en el Ecuador, captación de nuevas fuentes de donaciones, e introducción de EMP en la comunidad educativa del País.

[Visita el portal de Eruditos: http://www.eruditos.net/index.htm]

Eruditos además pone a disposición de todos los emigrantes, la posibilidad de mantenerse al tanto del desempeño académico de sus hijos en el Ecuador por medio de Alumni, que es un sistema que les permitirá revisar las notas y otros comentarios de los profesores. Este sistema se comercializa directamente a las instituciones educativas, pero es gratis para todos los usuarios.

Para Ecuador Mi País es muy grato contar con el apoyo de empresas como Eruditos, que ha confiado en el trabajo que hemos venido realizando por 3 años, y que nos reafirma en la misión de seguir apoyando la educación de nuestros niños.

Ecuador Mi País le da las gracias a Eruditos por este esfuerzo conjunto en favor de la educación.

[Mira las bandas publicitarias de Ecuador Mi País en el portal de Eruditos. http://www.eruditos.net/index.htm]

Encontré un articulo interesante hoy en El Comercio, en donde se presentan las carreras de mas demanda en la Feria de Estudios Superiores 2008.

Creo que seria interesante que todos tratemos de leerlo pues entre las carreras de mayor demanda laboral están “Marketing”, “Aviación Comercial” y “Multimedia”.

Para mi, y esto como un criterio muy personal, no pienso que esto refleja las necesidades de una sociedad como la nuestra en donde industrias como el turismo y la micro empresa con mucha inversión de las remesas de los inmigrantes, son fuente fundamental hoy en día del desarrollo del Ecuador. No existen suficientes fuentes de trabajo, en especial en las áreas de “Multimedia” y “Aviación Comercial”, como para desarrollar toda una clase de profesionales que se dediquen a este campo laboral.

Pero bueno siento que ese es mi apreciación acerca de este artículo. Porque no nos envías la tuya y desarrollamos un dialogo acerca de cuales serian las carreras mas interesantes de desarrollar en el Ecuador.

[Lee el Articulo]

- Herman Marin

El Fondo Monetario Internacional hoy nos presenta varias respuestas de lideres a nivel mundial que responden la siguiente pregunta:

What’s the single thing most likely to double living standards in poor countries over the next decade?

Entre las respuestas mas interesantes esta la de:

Andrew Kumbatira
Executive Director, Malawi Economic Justice Network

Que habla sobre la inversion en Educacion como una de las cosas que duplicaria el estandar de vida de las personas en paises en desarrollo.

A continuación su comentario:

Getting education right in poor countries can significantly spur economic growth and improve living standards. In Malawi, it has been shown that incomes are 12 percent higher for households whose head has completed primary education than for those who did not complete this basic level.

Two of the eight Millennium Development Goals refer to education—universal primary completion and gender parity in primary and secondary schooling. Moreover, according to the World Bank, education—especially girls’ education—has a direct and proven impact on child and reproductive health and environmental sustainability.

The quality of education for women also has a positive effect on family health and poverty levels. According to studies, countries with higher literacy rates for women are likely to be at a poverty line that is about half that of countries with lower literacy rates for women. Further, parents with at least a secondary education are nearly twice as likely to give their children treatment for malaria symptoms and their children are half as likely to be stunted. Both maternal and child mortality rates are higher among women with lower levels of education.

Investing in human resources in general, and quality basic education in particular, remains the most critical factor in improving living standards in poor countries in the next decade. After all, as they say, “Show me a poor education system and I will show you a poor country!”

Credits by:

http://www.imf.org/

Hoy el Ecuador esta viviendo uno de los procesos históricos más importantes
de este nuevo siglo: la creación de una nueva constitución.

Queremos escuchar tus comentarios sobre la propuesta constitucional relacionada a la educación.

Crees que la nueva constitución contribuirá a que los ecuatorianos y ecuatorianas tengamos un acceso más equitativo a la educación y que ésta sea de mejor calidad?

Lee aquí los artículos del texto constitucional propuesto relacionados a la educación.

BAJA LA PROPUESTA CONSTITUCIONAL

INVITA A TU FAMILIA O AMIGOS A COMENTAR

Solamente con el dialogo y la participación intelectual de los ecuatorianos es que podremos sacar conclusiones balanceadas acerca de esta propuesta constituyente que de una u otra manera nos afectara a todos y al futuro de los niños en el Ecuador.

Nota: Ecuador Mi País es una organización apartidista y apolitica. Los comentarios vertidos en este espacio son a título personal y de ninguna manera reflejan la visión de Ecuador Mi País. El contenido de los mensajes es revisado y filtrado por los administradores del blog. Ecuador Mi País se reserva el derecho de publicar o no los comentarios enviados a través de este medio.

A pocos días de que la Asamblea termine sus labores nos hemos querido dar un tiempo para recapacitar acerca de las reales posibilidades que tenemos como una comunidad que no vive en el Ecuador y que intenta involucrarse en realizar un cambio profundo en la organización y administración de a educación en el Ecuador.

Ecuador Mi País cree fielmente en que ese cambio es posible hoy en día por varios factores que queremos enumerarlos aquí:

• En el Ecuador se ha venido promoviendo con mucha fuerza la idea de los Mandatos. Estos Mandatos no son mas que el reflejo de los pensamientos, ideas y propuestas para reformar la ley que tiene una comunidad en especifico y que apunta a establecer un precedente de cambio entre los políticos que toman las decisiones
• El interés del Gobierno de turno por crear un espacio en el poder legislativo para el Migrante. Este espacio tiene el mismo poder de representatividad que un representante provincial.
• El desarrollo del Internet dentro y fuera del Ecuador como una herramienta de investigación, de opinión y de acción social.
• La Asamblea Constituyente ha desarrollado un portal con el fin de comunicar los sucesos dentro de las sesiones. Este portal brinda un contacto directo via e-mail para comunicarse con los asambleistas.

Estos puntos nos han llevado a desarrollar esta herramienta que hoy llamamos la pagina Web de Ecuador Mi País. Esta plataforma posee varias herramientas que nos ayudaran a trabajar como una comunidad online joven e innovadora que lucha por mejorar la situación de varios niños en el Ecuador. Nuestros estándares y técnicas han sido probados por varias organizaciones muy progresistas en los EEUU y Europa. Estas organizaciones han sido la base de un cambio no solo en lo social, pero también en la forma de hacer legislación en estas áreas del planeta.

Creemos que este es el momento en el Ecuador de desarrollar este cambio de interacción entre la comunidad y los políticos, en donde la comunidad a través de la tecnología presiona con la fuerza de su voz y su voto por el cambio y el mejor desarrollo de las leyes.

El desarrollo de leyes mas sólidas y mejor desarrolladas sin duda tendrá un impacto en crear programas que funcionen mejor, que posean seguridad jurídica para incrementar su impacto y que le brinden una ayuda mas amplia y mas a largo plazo a los niños de escasos recursos en el Ecuador.

Este es el momento en el Ecuador para crear este nivel de comunicación que lo hemos aprendido con nuestro sacrificio viviendo en otros países. Únete a la causa y juntemos nuestras voces por el bien de la niñez y de los futuros líderes en nuestro país Ecuador.

- Herman Marin