Given the global reach of the internet, it may come as no surprise that last year a Nursery World project made it all the way to a classroom in the mountains of Peru. But this project arrived by post, with accompanying resources, and featured in Nursery World on 4 March 1982.
The project was sent by Janet Kingsmill, a nursery nurse for over 30 years, at the request of her daughter Deborah who, with her husband Wesley Stephenson, was doing seven weeks' voluntary work in a school as part of their nine-month career break spent travelling the world.
The school, located in a desperately poor part of Huaraz, had been set up by the charitable organisation Bruce Peru, which works to get child labourers and very poor children into school.
In Peru, school fees of about 2 a term, a uniform and basic resources, such as pencils, are not affordable to the country's poorest families, meaning that many children miss out on an education.
Bruce Peru provides children with a basic education in its Huaraz school before giving them the money to buy a school uniform and enrolling them in a state school.
'The children live mainly in the slums and their parents are often unemployed or earn almost nothing working in markets,' explains Deborah.
'Because they haven't had any education, they need to learn their alphabet, numbers, how to add up and basic reading. A lot of the children, even up to the age of ten or 11, can't read or write or recognise the alphabet or a number.'
And yet many children are still expected to work, she says. 'Quite a lot of our children worked in the evenings selling candles on the streets or shoe shining.'
A place to play
The school plays a more important role than just supplying a rudimentary curriculum. Deborah says, 'I call it a school, but it had a wider remit. It was to give the children a place to play - they didn't have any toys or anything like that - and we gave them a hot meal every day at lunchtime.
'We also gave them a shower once a week on a rota basis. There were 40 to 45 children, so we couldn't shower them every day.'
Deborah and Wesley did not speak enough Spanish to be responsible for teaching, but they still played an important role.
'We acted more like helpers, just to keep the thing running: sharpen pencils, give out paper or wipe noses. And the other thing they needed us for was to raise funds for the school. We taught English to Peruvian adults in the town for a small fee in the evenings,' says Deborah.
With funds and resources in such short supply at the school, Deborah turned to her mother Janet, a Nursery World reader for more than 30 years, when teachers at the school expressed an interest in doing an art project with the children.
'I became a nursery nurse when I was very young and had kept a few articles that I found really, really useful,' Janet explains.
What emerged from her search in the attic was 'Let's Make An Underwater Scene', an art project giving ideas on how to make fish, shells and other representations of aquatic life.
Classroom makeover
When the 23-year-old Nursery World art project arrived, it quickly developed from simply a stimulating change from daily lessons to an opportunity for a classroom makeover, transforming a dowdy and dirty room that had not been decorated for years into a colourful, exciting learning area.
'They don't have enough money for interior decorating, not when they've got to feed the children,' says Deborah. But on this occasion the school leader decided it was worth spending the money to decorate a huge wall with the under-the-sea theme.
'It escalated, really,' says Deborah. 'Initially, all I was going to do was make the fish, and Mum had sent me a whole batch of shiny paper and really lovely things that the children were just delighted with.'
Deborah and her fellow workers set about washing the walls and cleaning the room. Then they spent 48 hours painting and preparing it.
When the children arrived, the project was explained to them and how they would get the chance to play their part.
'They were so excited it was unreal,' says Deborah. 'They set to; every child made a fish or two, and we drew some seaweed and little shells that we also got from the Nursery World piece.
'It was just amazingly simple, and there was so much that they could do. We had so many different fish done in so many different ways. The children obviously hadn't done anything like this before.
'We also got some wall glue so that it would be a permanent feature. It's still there now a year later.' NW
