Day seven started out very early, seeing that our days never really end. We met with Governor Carlos and the Rotary club of Surco. They told us the day would be an experience with the German school, we were all wondering what exactly that meant. We got into a van and went for a drive back towards the Andes, it reminded me a bit of what the ride from La Molina felt like.
We arrived to meet with the school leaders and found it to be called Johannes Guttenberg school; the name of the German school totally made sense now. The school was run by a rotary club from German, and we were introduced to those that run the school by its director, Martin Bareiss. The Germans have been running the Peruvian school for about 20 years, but the school provided students with much more than an education. Peruvian students had an issue with not just a lack of education, but a lack of skills.
In America, we would call Johannes Guttenberg a technical school, but in Peru that is not the norm. The school not only provided technical knowledge, but also with skills to actually manage a business. This skill, for the most part, is something that America technical schools did not provide. The German school realized that skills mean nothing if there is not skills to monetize that. We were provided and excellent example of this in the textile and sewing class. The seniors were given a project where they have to design a real business. They create a business plan, find all the materials, do a cost-benefit analysis and then produce the desired product for sale.
Many of the other divisions of the school are like this as well; they create a usable product from their trade. The school covers man others portions of business including, manufacturing, electronics, welding and any other trade you can think of. The students come out of school with the ability to have a trade or the ability to move onto university.
After a long day, we went back to the home of Grace’s host family, and learned to make balloon animals. This was very interesting to me, seeing it was an art I always wanted to learn. My host mother Susan came to pick me up from what I thought was a very long day, but it did not end there. Gonzolo brought his friend, Felix, with him that was a personal trainer. It was very interesting to see how personal training is different in Peru. Felix explained to me that it was very difficult to make money on training in Peru, mainly because people do not have the disposable income in order to be able to train. However, Felix believes within the next 5 years it would be a very large and up incoming career.