TILIMUQUI SCHOOL TURNS TEN
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Ten years ago, on 12th May 2010, a crowd of over 1500 people, including our co-operative members, workers and their families, local dignitaries, representatives from The Co-op (UK) and Giertz Vinimport (Sweden), local media and many people from Tilimuqui and Chilecito, gathered together to celebrate the official inauguration of the Colegio Nacional Agrotecnico (CoNAg) in Tilimuqui. An historical occasion which saw the birth of the region’s first pre-university technical college and Argentina’s first Fairtrade-funded secondary school.
Since opening in May 2010 with just 33 students, the school has become extremely popular and has seen its student numbers grow year on year, reaching a current intake of over 530 students (March 2020), which are supported by a team of 56 teachers, 12 administrative staff, 10 maintenance personnel and a head teacher.
In its first 10 years, the school has created extra classrooms to accommodate the rising numbers of pupils and has benefitted from a donation of 15 hectares of land, made by the local government, allowing the students to carry out experimental and practical farming. Something which has been vital to their education, giving students the opportunity to learn first-hand about growing crops and raising animals, providing some of their crops for the school dining room and making different products such as jams and dried fruits to show and sell to the public. In addition to this, the students have taken part in numerous other school and extracurricular activities, including national sport competitions and camping trips.
The 10th anniversary represents the culmination of an ambitious and successful project by La Riojana Co-operative and the Asociación de Comercio Justo, whose dream was to build a much-needed secondary school offering the youth of TIlimuqui and the surrounding areas the chance of a free technical education specialising in agriculture. A dream enabled by contributions from key customers such as Giertz Vinimport, Sweden and Co-op, UK and made possible by the local university, Universidad Nacional de Chilecito, who, through its highly qualified teaching staff and day to day management, has permitted the school to offer a very high level of education.
The school will not only be responsible for providing hundreds of children, who might not otherwise have been able to attend secondary school, with a high-quality education, it is producing the agriculturalists of tomorrow who in turn will have enhanced career prospects and the chance of a better future. In 2015 the first pupils graduated from the school and as of December 2019 the school has produced a total of 183 graduates. Many of whom have gone onto study degrees including agricultural engineering, engineering and oenology at the local university as well as national universities in other provinces.
The Tilimuqui school project has become a notable legacy for which everyone who has supported it should be extremely proud. It is a project that has not only had a profound impact on the future of the children of Tilimuqui but also a positive socio-economic impact on the entire local community, with the creation of new jobs, better communication and transport links for a village which until the opening of the new school had found itself isolated from the rest of the local region.
