As one of Latin America's least developed countries, Paraguay has a history of gender disparity, known as machismo. The statistics show how this disparity affects girls' ability to advance in society. According to UN Women:
- The adolescent birth rate is 72 per 1000 population as of 2015.
- As of February 2019, there are only 15% of parliament seats held by women.
- In 2008, 8% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence in the previous 12 months.
- Women and girls aged 15+ spend 14.5% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work compared to 4.3% spent by men.
We improve education, empower leaders, and increase gender parity.
Meet Sonia
In the Kid Teacher training we had many students, but one in particular caught our attention: her name is Sonia. As soon as she arrived at the training she was very shy as expected from being the first day, and as the days went by she started opening up a little more to talk and play with her classmates until she got to make several new friends. So far everything seemed normal, but then we learned something shocking when she talked to us as we were making lomitos.
She told us that in her school she suffers from bullying, not only from her classmates, but also many times from her teacher. Several times instead of reproaching her students for how they treated her, her teacher simply did nothing. For Sonia everything changed when she got to Superniños, she realized that she is very intelligent and capable and that she could also make several friends.
Most importantly, these new friends respected and loved her for who she is. She showed us that many times we feel that we are not worth much because of the way others treat us, but we are simply in the wrong place and that there are places and people that do value us and love us for who we are.
Meet Orlando
Orlando is a Kid Teacher. He has also been a witness to domestic violence.
With Superkids, Orlando has learned what it means to be an active bystander. When some of our young girls were catcalled by 7th graders, we talked to the kids about how to respond to gendered harassment.
Girls were trained to get help and boys were trained to be an ally. Orlando couldn't image sitting back and watching his female peers in the fifth grade be harassed,
“Of course I would help, they’re my compañeras.”
Superkids sets the bar of how boys and girls, men and women need to treat each other at school and in the workplace.