Around 850 students aged between 5 and 18 took part in the annual festival of music and physical education at René Barrientos Ortuño School on the outskirts of Cochabamba on November 20. The children showcased dances from around Bolivia, a selection of traditional music and a dazzling array of costumes. During one performance boys wore white tunics with multicoloured plumes of feathers on their heads and in another they donned embroidered black and pink outfits with bells on their shoes. Girls also ensured there was plenty of colour on the dance floor, wearing luminescent orange and yellow skirts paired with bright green tassels hanging from the end of their plaits in one act and silky red and green ruffled dresses in another.

Highlights included a musical performance involving Andean panpipes, a dance routine in which boys armed with fake saws cut down classmates dressed as trees to warn against deforestation, and a daring human pyramid formed of more than 20 students balancing on chairs, ladders and each other.

School Director Adolfo Mamani Riquez said the festival was a chance for the students to show their parents and peers the dancing and gymnastic skills they had picked up in physical education lessons during the course of the year.

“It’s important because the students have to take part in physical, artistic and spiritual education during their time at school,” he said. “The students are starting to learn to dance, they’re learning about different rhythms and different physical activities like gymnastics and exercises such as the pyramids, which are part of the ministry of education’s programme.”

Around 100 people visit Proyecto Horizonte’s health centre every day. Many of them come complaining of diarrhoea, dehydration, flu or respiratory infections but others have more serious illnesses such as tuberculosis, leishmaniosis – a disease transmitted by infected sandflies that can cause skin sores or affect key organs – and Chagas disease – a parasitic infection that can eventually cause heart failure.

Alvaro, who has been head of the health centre since it opened around ten years ago, says many of the conditions he treats are directly related to his patients’ poor living conditions and their nutrient-deficient diets. There’s no doubt that this community in southern Cochabamba has come a long way since former miners and their families started moving here in the early 2000s in search of a better future, only to end up living in tents initially. But even now most families here live in tiny houses with no running water or sanitation services. Bottles, plastic bags and food wrappers lie abandoned at the side of the roads, dogs roam around freely, the dust that swirls in the wind has a choking effect and trucks spewing out black exhaust fumes pollute the air.

Cramped conditions in homes are one of the key problems, Alvaro says.”Families have very few rooms to live in so that encourages illnesses to spread from one person to another via contact so once someone gets ill, the whole family tends to go down with the same thing and when it’s an illness like tuberculosis, it’s very serious,” Alvaro explains.

The health centre is working towards preventing life-threatening diseases like tuberculosis and rabies by providing free vaccinations and by raising awareness about their causes and symptoms.

But those aren’t the only problems here. Malnutrition is also rife among both children and adults because their diets tend to be heavy on carbohydrates like rice, potatoes and pasta but light on other foods which provide vitamins and minerals. “They don’t eat the necessary nutrients to be healthy, partly for cultural reasons – we are accustomed to a certain type of diet – and partly because their economic situation means they can’t afford to eat all of the things that they need to eat such as milk, yoghurt and meat,” he says.

As in much of the rest of Bolivia, people here also eat a lot of chocolate, cake and dessert – a habit that is encouraged by the small kiosks selling sweet treats galore on almost every street corner, outside schools and even outside the health centre. And that, combined with a nationwide passion for fizzy drinks, affects their dental health too – many people suffer from tooth decay or have missing teeth so the two dentists who work at the health centre have their work cut out doing treatments and raising awareness about the importance of dental hygiene.

All of our health services are provided either free of charge or at a rate that is affordable for people in this poor community but we couldn’t do this without your help. Save lives, heal sick babies or give children the gift of a healthy smile by clicking here. A donation of just $10 would cover the cost of a medical check-up for an entire family while a donation of $20 would enable an entire family to get their teeth checked out by one of our dentists.

Although her husband found a job as a taxi driver, his income was not sufficient to support them both so Berta began cooking and selling a dish of crispy fried chicken with rice at a roadside kiosk. But when her sons – now aged two and five – were born, life became even more exhausting than before. Like many women in Bolivia, Berta was expected to look after the children as well as going out to work and doing all of the washing, cooking and cleaning. And like many children in Bolivia, her oldest son only goes to school in the morning, making it difficult for her to work outside the home in the afternoon.

Nonetheless, Berta needed to continue earning money for her family so she asked if she could join Tantakuna and, thankfully for her, the other women agreed.

While she still has a long list of household chores to work through every day, she can now stay at home and keep an eye on her children while making belts, bracelets and pot stands.

“My sons play in the house when I work in the afternoon – they’re in the same room as me so I can look after them and weave at the same time. That makes it very practical for me to work from home and I’m really happy with my job because if I have work I can earn some money,” she says.

What’s more, working for Tantakuna means she can now afford to buy toys for her children. She says the job is also helping her to provide her children with a brighter future because she now has sufficient funds to kit her oldest son out with school uniform and cover his other school-related costs. She’ll be able to do the same for her younger son once he’s old enough too.

At 25 years of age, Berta is one of the younger women in the group and is also proud to be called its president. One of her main responsibilities is to keep in touch with the local chamber of small industries to find out when and where fairs are taking place – and whether the women can run stalls at these events.

She loves Fridays because that’s when she meets up with the other nine members of Tantakuna to discuss what products they should make, where to sell them and how to price them – as well as having a good giggle.

“We have a lot of fun. Sometimes we get angry because we don’t always agree about everything to do with the products but it’s only for a short while and then we’re happy again,” she says.

Berta spends up to eight hours a day making products for Tantakuna. It’s a labour of love – making a belt takes two days and brings in the equivalent of up to $17 while a bag takes a whole week and earns her about $29. She says the money is sufficient to live on if she has a good number of orders.

At the moment she is busy making earrings, bracelets and small bags to sell at a fair in December. But for Berta being part of this women’s microenterprise is about so much more than simply weaving and making money.

“We talk about all sorts of things – if I have problems with my husband, I can talk to other women in the group and we also discuss our children and how to educate them. The other women are like friends to me and the best thing about Tantakuna is sharing with them,” she says.

Daniel had fallen far behind his classmates, most of whom could already read and write by the age of six, and he felt there was no way he would ever catch up. Frustrated and fed up, he caused trouble in the classroom by aggravating and hitting the other children instead of trying to learn.

When he took a two-hour exam to test his reading, writing and mathematical skills, the full extent of his problems became clear and he was offered a place on a school tutoring programme that Proyecto Horizonte runs for children who have learning difficulties or have slipped behind their peers in some subjects. Since then Daniel has been attending extra classes in the morning to get up to scratch on the basics while continuing to attend mainstream lessons in the afternoon.

Maria Teresa Rodríguez Heredia, who leads the tutoring programme, says one of the problems is that teachers in the mainstream classes use the board a lot and so often fail to explain concepts or exercises in a way that children like Daniel can understand. “The teacher just goes over to the board and says ‘we’re going to do divisions today’ and then writes out a few divisions and says ‘do an exercise – do it like this and hey presto!'” she explains, adding that many of her pupils struggle to get to grips with material unless it is taught in a way that they can actually see and experience.

So in her classes, mathematical concepts are explained visually. In a lesson on division, for example, students have fun sharing small buttons out between cut-out paper boys and girls. They also play didactic computer games to boost their reading skills. Thanks to these interactive learning strategies, specialised one-on-one teaching time and a lot of encouragement, reassurance and praise, Daniel is now nothing like the dejected, demoralised boy who trudged into Maria Teresa’s classroom for the first time earlier this year.

He now turns up to school full of enthusiasm, reads and writes fluently, oozes confidence and loves to solve all kinds of mathematical problems. And now that he knows he’s capable of doing his schoolwork, he no longer feels the need to irritate or hurt his fellow pupils. “He behaves so much better now than he used to – he controls himself and he pays attention to me and respects me,” Maria Teresa says.

What’s more, he’s even trying to help his classmates out now, showing them how to do their schoolwork and correcting them when they make mistakes.

Daniel is one of a huge number of children who have beaten their gremlins by learning how to read and write through the tutoring programme. Of the 130 pupils Maria Teresa has worked with this year, 115 have shown signs of significant improvement and many of her former students are now achieving good grades at school.

Without the extra lessons, Daniel’s story could have been very different. Maria Teresa says some struggling students who don’t get help in time simply leave school early, often encouraged by their parents, who tell them they are no good at school and should just go to work with them instead.

To help us help more children like Daniel, please click here. By giving even a small amount you can help to keep children like him in school and on track for a brighter future.

Fighting at school is a common topic in the one-on-one sessions he holds with 6 to 18-year-olds, as are problems at home such as mistreatment or students’ parents divorcing.

“There are often emotional problems related to those sorts of family issues, with the student feeling sad, depressed or aggressive,” says David, who joined Proyecto Horizonte seven months ago.

Other problems he frequently discusses with students include skipping lessons, failing to complete school work or not turning up to school at all.

The students’ parents are often strict, do not understand their concerns or spend all day at work and so do not have time for a heart-to-heart, he says. That leaves many students with no one to confide in so some turn to David of their own volition while others get referred to him by a teacher.

“They feel liberated just by coming to talk about their problems in many cases,” he says, adding that one of the most rewarding aspects of his job is seeing the children become calmer as they tackle their troubles during a course of up to ten sessions.

If you would like to support David’s work with the schoolchildren, please click here. A donation of just $25 would enable to him to provide 10 therapy sessions.

Proyecto Horizonte founded  Tantakuna – which means “to meet together” in the indigenous language of Quechua – in 2006 with the aim of helping the women earn money for their families while also giving them a circle of support in which they could share knowledge and friendship.

The group started exporting products such as keyrings, bracelets, scarves, placemats, cases for electronics and bags in 2011 and business has flourished since then. Last year the women sold almost 50 percent more products than in 2013 and while 2015 is proving to be a tougher year, the women are determined to find new foreign buyers for their goods.

They are currently seeking to hire a salesperson who can ratchet up their export ventures as they prioritise these over the highly competitive Bolivian market,

In addition, they have just finished making samples of an exclusive range of products for One World Shop, a fair trade organisation that sells handicrafts from around the world.

“The quality of the products has improved a lot over the last two years because the women are much more aware now of how the markets work and what clients demand so we feel we are ready for One World Shop now,” says Johan Börjesson, head of community relations at Proyecto Horizonte and an advisor to Tantakuna.

The women have been working hard to improve the consistency of their woven and knitted handicrafts so they can boost foreign sales.

“I used to say I could tell which women had made which products just by looking at them but that’s getting harder now,” Börjesson says.

What’s more, the group will probably get its formal business papers within the next two months – a step that would make it more independent of Proyecto Horizonte and more focussed on generating revenues than simply meeting together.

But it will seek to stay connected to its origins as a community of women. Each Tantakuna product sent overseas will come with a label featuring a photo of the woman who made it along with her name, date of birth and a short biography. The designs used for the handicrafts are all the women’s own and some of the traditional Bolivian symbols they use already come with explanations.

“That’s very important for us because as much as we’re selling a good product, we’re also selling Bolivian culture and the cause of Tantakuna,” Börjesson says.