CENIT's Methodology

There are several advantages to CENIT's methodology. First, we have volunteers participating in street outreach every weekday, year-round. This allows us to accurately identify which children are working, and to bond with their families. This also enables us to get a realistic impression of how many working children regularly attend school. Once we form relationships with the kids and their families, we then try to convince the parents to send their kids to school. We facilitate this process either by accompanying them when they enrol their students in other area schools, or we help them enrol in CENIT. For those families who are still hesitant about enrolling their children in school, we are able to convince them to enrol their children in CENIT because our school is specifically structured to help working children. While normal schools in Ecuador have 6 years of basic (elementary) education and 6 years of colegio (high school) education, CENIT condenses both the elementary and high school into three years each, allowing children to complete two years of study every school year. Parents of working children, who often do not want to send their children to school because they fear their family will not be able to survive financially without the child’s income, are often persuaded to send their children to CENIT because they will be sacrificing the added income for a decreased amount of time. Another benefit to CENIT's program is that it has very flexible age limits. For example, in the 1st year of ESTAR, the elementary school, there are children enrolled between the age of 8 and 15. Having flexible age limits enables children who have never been in school before, or have been out of school for a considerable amount of time, to attend school. CENIT also combines a traditional education with a vocational center, which teaches useful skills such as carpentry, sewing, cosmetology, baking, and card making. We teach the children these skills so that if they are unable to continue studies, they will at least have usable skills that will qualify them for work off the streets. The final reason our program works is because the students’ parents must participate in CENIT through various programs we offer for the parents, such as the Parent’s School, a program run by the social workers and psychologist that provides the parents with monthly information sessions and workshops on a variety of topics ranging from family planning to alternative forms of punishment to nutrition.

Why is CENIT Referred to as the Center for the Working Girl as Opposed to the Center for the Working Child?

CENIT is called “The Center for the Working Girl” because its founders attempted to specifically address the problems of working girls. Often, working girls live in much harsher conditions than working boys. For example, they are much more susceptible to abuse, rape, and sexual assault. Also, they are much more likely to be malnourished because often in families the mother will feed the father and the sons, and then the daughters, and then (if there is still food), herself. The daughters are also much less likely than the sons to receive education, because if a family has any money to send a child to school, they will send a male child with the belief that educating him would be a better investment. Also, while most working children work between 8-12 hours a day, girls will work an extra 6 to 8 hours because they must help out with the household and domestic chores. For this reason, CENIT’s founders felt it was especially important to help girls. However, it is also important to note that these same founders realized that girls are part of a larger social structure comprised of both male and female citizens. They realized that a girl’s family is comprised of the same way, and know that if the goal is truly for a girl to succeed, her whole family must do so as well. For this reason, CENIT accepts those boys that are related to the girls in our program, through work or family, as eligible participants as well.