Escuelas Deporte y Vida
(Sports and Life Schools)

Lima, Peru

Schools that Score Big

In Villa El Salvador, a vast squatter settlement outside Lima, Peru, it’s easy to describe kids based on what they and their families don’t have. Most of their parents are landless rural migrants who don’t have steady jobs. They live in makeshift houses built on a landfill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, without electricity or running water. They often don’t have enough to eat. Schools are overburdened, and most families don’t have the means to pay for a child’s education outside the slum. Violence in the streets and at home means that safety, fun, and caring are also lacking from daily life.

The list of what’s missing is a long one, yet Sara Diestro looks at the same children and sees aspirations, talents, and potential, all waiting to be developed. As a social worker for a professional Peruvian soccer team, Diestro learned the allure that sports have for children—and the positive values and healthy environment that inclusive sports programs can provide. Using soccer as a draw, she runs the Escuelas Deporte y Vida (Sports and Life Schools) program to give six- to fifteen-year-old boys and girls in Villa El Salvador a chance to play. Through the program’s activities, these children also develop self-esteem and life skills that help them succeed on and off the field.

An interest in sports may bring kids to Deporte y Vida, but once they get involved they gain much more. Each activity meets a clear goal. Deporte y Vida’s after-school tutoring and library offer a complement to public schools. Classes in music, theater, and crafts develop valuable skills and creative energies. Sustained, loving attention from teachers and coaches strengthens kids emotionally. And soccer games that reward teamwork and fair play instill the message that winning is about more than scoring goals.

Today, Deporte y Vida serves 1,400 children and runs four community schools that follow this successful model. In 2002, the Global Fund for Children began supporting a school in the Jardines de Pachamac neighborhood of Villa El Salvador, paying salaries for teachers and a psychologist and helping to buy sports equipment and supplies. Deporte y Vida has been an inspiration to others, and underserved communities in and beyond Peru are replicating its programs.

Most exciting to the kids, Deporte y Vida was chosen to represent Peru at the 2006 World Cup as one of the best programs worldwide working on sports and social development. This honor proves to the children that the list of what they have, and what they can become, is growing longer every day.

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